.tie 



■ft? tnp ttoAice r 



'f 






HV 5258 
.H8 
Copy 1 



-H8 Hill lllllil""""" 1 " m 



What Ex>er$ Thinking Man 
and Woman Should Read! 



WHAT IS TRUE 
TEMPERANCE? 

The Temperance of Christ or 
The Temperance of Mohammed? 

GOD IN THE WAR 

2?£ Jean Paul Huter. 



PRICE 25 CENTS 



Published b$ REFORM PUBLISHING CO. 
KANSAS CITY. MO. 



y/Lst4^Vis 



u 



■'1 









Copyright, 1917 by 
Reform Publishing Co. 



THE BECK PRINTING CO. 



I. WHAT IS TEMPERANCE? 

How May We Obtain True Temperance? 

All earnest and thinking men and women who have the betterment of 
social conditions at heart are deeply interested in Temperance. For tem- 
perance means self-control, conservation of energy, and the promotion of 
those strictly human and social values which, all in all, more than any 
other factor, make, life worth living. Since temperance is such an impor- 
tant and valuable asset to the individual as well as to the community, and 
since we all must agree that to attain it to the highest possible degree is 
"a consummation devoutly to be wished," it behooves us, first of all, to in- 
quire what constitutes true temperance, lest by misunderstanding its true 
nature we make our very zeal a stumbling block and render it very diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to attain the object of our earnest desires and en- 
deavors. 

No one will deny that intemperance is a very great evil and causes 
much human misery; no one will deny that many places where alcoholic 
liquor is dispensed without proper regulation and supervision and with 
disregard of special local conditions are often breeding places of vice and 
should be exterminated. But since it is beyond all doubt advisable not 
only, but absolutely imperative, that such places be suppressed forthwith, 
the further question seems readily to arise as to whether it were not best 
to suppress the sale of liquor altogether and render it not only difficult, 
but practically impossible, for anyone to obtain alcoholic beverages even 
of the milder types. A good many people have taken the position that 
the total removal of all opportunity to obtain liquor will effectually rid us 
of the evils pertaining to its sale and use, but since we are above all things 
anxious to bring about, as much as possible, a condition of true temper- 
ance, it is important that we find and employ the right method, the method 
which will most successfully insure such a condition. It remains, there- 
fore, to be seen, before we go too far, whether prohibition can really be 
accepted as the right method. If the absolute suppression of certain 
highly objectionable phases of the sale of liquor is a matter in which we 
must all heartily agree, does it necessarily follow that the total prohibition 
of the sale and use of liquor is not only an effective remedy for all the 
evils incidental to such sale and use, but a remedy which, more than any 
other, will bring about that most desirable condition — real temperance in 
all things? If prohibition is such a specific remedy, let us by all means 
adopt it; but if prohibition has not been, and cannot be, proved such a 
specific and universal remedy, it remains to be seen whether absolute and 
indiscriminate prohibition may not become the cause of equally great, if 
not greater, evils than the evils for which it is supposed to be the cure. 
If it were merely a question of "rather bear the ills we have than to fly 
to others that we know not of," we could still embrace unconditional pro- 
hibition as a possible salvation from a social evil, for the honest and sin- 
cere reformer will certainly not hesitate, to suppress a condition which 
seems responsible for existing evils, even at the risk of causing thereby 
other, but as yet wholly unknown, evils. But if the evils that follow in 
thewake of prohibition were found to be not an unknown quantity, but 
definite and tangible, destructive and disintegrating elements, we should 
indeed carefully weigh whether the evils thus engendered.' directly or in- 
directly, by prohibition may not overbalance the evils which it is supposed 
to cure, and whether the cause of true temperance is really served and 

l 



promoted by prohibition, For what we all want is temperance, true tem- 
perance, not only in eating and drinking, but as much as possible in all 
human enjoyments, activities and relations. 

The most important element entering into a discussion of the drink 
problem is its moral-religious aspect, but, before going more fully into a 
discussion of that part of the problem, we will contemplate it for a mo- 
ment in the crucible of philosophic thought. As the ancient Hebrews 
treated all vital problems in the light of religious significance and moral 
application, so the Greeks, the intellectual leaders of classic antiquity, in- 
vestigated all such problems in the light of reason and philosophy. Hence 
the Greek conception of temperance may at least serve as a guiding 
torch in such a discussion. The ancient Greeks reduced all virtue to four 
fundamental categories: COURAGE, TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE AND 
WISDOM. Our present purpose and space does not permit us to consider 
three of these fundamental aspects of virtue, our subject being Temper- 
ance. We may only allude to Courage as being the dynamic basis without 
which virtue cannot become active, and to Wisdom, as being the light 
that guides, while it is only through Justice that the exercise of virtue is 
practically realized according to the Greek conception. Justice, indeed, was 
deemed so important by Plato, the greatest thinker of antiquity, that he 
made it the subject of his most celebrated book, the Republic. The Greek 
conception of justice and the parallel conception of the spiritually more 
exalted Hebrews blossoms out into the Christian Idea of Love, the one 
and universal principle of the spiritual life. 

But justice and love are universal and give not measure unto them- 
selves. Yet everything that takes place according to time, place and cir- 
cumstance must be done with measure, otherwise even justice and love 
would fail to accomplish their object, since excess at one time and in one 
place might evidently cause want at other times and places, and you 
might find yourseif compelled to rob Peter in order to give to Paul. The 
law of giving, taking and doing according to right measure is the Law of 
Temperance, the s^reat instrument of Justice and Love. 

Temperance the Law of Laws. 

Temperance has been called by a great poet the Ruling Master, and 
indeed in the strict sense of a law in its widest natural and sociological 
application, it is THE LAW OF LAWS. It prevails throughout nature, 
being called, in the highest generalization, the law of equal action and 
reaction; it has always been instinctively applied in the arts as the law 
of* right proportion ; in our modern ethical system it tends to identify 
itself with justice, while in that simple and childlike ethics which is as 
old and imperishable as the hills, it is simply the Golden Rule: Do unto 
others as ye would that they do unto you. However, it is chiefly in the 
relation to our personal conduct, whether with regard to the indulgence 
of our wants and desires or our behavior towards others, as far as not 
regulated ry civic law, that this great and universal law and ruling mas- 
ter is at present called by its right name — Temperance. 

Ten Trance a Quality of the Soul. Prohibition an Externa] Condition. 

At this point it seems proper to inquire as to what constitutes the 
difference as well as the kinship between temperance and prohibition, as 
applied to present day conditions in our own communities. Prohibition, 
as the word implies, is purely negative in its meaning and application, 
while temperance, as we have seen, is the principle of right measure in 

2 



all things. Temperance means voluntary restriction as well as rational 
tolerance in all things that are in themselves good or harmless or in which 
the good outweighs the evil. Temperance is altogether a quality of the 
character, while prohibition is merely an external, more or less arbitrary 
condition intended to produce the superficial results of temperance by 
means of external force. Temperance is part of the spontaneous inner 
life of man; prohibition forces, or attempts to force, external abstinence 
upon men. 

The tone of the Jewish-Christian decalogue, as far as it applies to the 
conduct toward our fellowmen and to the indulgence of our desires, is 
almost exclusively negative or prohibitive, for it concerns itself chiefly 
with our tendencies to sin, the positively good instincts being presumed 
as having room to display themselves spontaneously within these restric- 
tions. But although the secondary laws and regulations of Moses have 
much to say about eating and drinking, the decalogue has not a word as 
to what "Thou shalt drink or not drink," for the simple reason that drink- 
ing and' eating in itself can never be criminal or sinful, and the law of God 
need not directly concern itself with these things, they being entrusted 
safely to nature. The 'Thou shalt nots" of the Decalogue are therefore 
directed only against the unnatural and sinful methods of satisfying nat- 
ural wants and needs; they do not aim at the suppression of those nat- 
ural wants and desires or at the condemnation of their satisfaction by 
other methods ; on the contrary, the legitimacy of those desires and their 
proper satisfaction is taken for granted. Thus the commandment, "Thou 
shalt not bear false witness," does not imply that a man may not refuse 
to disclose the truth in order to protect himself. The commandment, 
"Thou shalt not kill," does not mean that a man may not defend himself 
against attack or that the death penalty may not be imposed for murder 
and other equally grave crimes. (Remember that the same Moses who 
received this commandment from God soon thereafter bade the sons of 
Levi to "kill every man his brother and his companion," because they had 
fallen out of the true faith; and there were killed three thousand men.) 
The. commandment that stamps adultery as a great sin and crime does 
not insinuate, that the affection between the sexes is in itself sinful or 
that marriage is a thing to be avoided. 

How different is the application of the law of temperance in a pro- 
hibitive form as embodied in such laws as forbid even the use of fer- 
mented beverages and make their sale a crime! Here prohibition is not 
merely a restriction, but an absolute inhibition of the satisfaction of a 
natural want. Not excessive indulgence but even the moderate use of 
such beverages is thus branded as a crime, and human nature is degraded 
by the assumption that (moral) evil is put into a man's soul by what he 
eats and drinks, and that he himself is wholly without moral autonomy 
and responsibility. 

Since the terms prohibition and temperance are absolutely distinct 
and can never be used interchangeably, the word temperance, as currently 
used by our prohibitionists, being a distortion and misapplication of the 
true meaning of the. word, it might be asked, what, in the widest and 
most abstract sense can be accepted as the Measure of Life and all its 
currents and manifestations? Protagoras, the Greek philosopher, declared 
MAN AS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS, a theorem which found 
ready acceptance among the people and which indeed, as a general atti- 
tude toward life, is the finest and grandest interpretation of the lav/ of 
temperance. But as the concept man may have different meanings with 
different individualities and peoples, the great principle of Protagoras soon 

3 



led men, through the vice of self-conceit, to the transgression of all lim- 
itation and measure, to irreverance and self-magnification, which culmi- 
nated in that most arrogant intellectual pride that was one of the active 
factors in the degeneration of ancient Greek civilization. 

The Ideal or Divine Man the "Measure" and Law of Temperance. 

MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS nevertheless, the Ideal 
or Divine Man who lives in the breast of everyone with infinitely varying 
intensity and vitality, Protagoras was not able to present to his contem- 
poraries, either in nature or in art, the embodiment of such an ideal man, 
since he, as well as his whole nation, lacked the spiritual exaltation re- 
quired to the conception and comprehension of such an ideal. But we, of 
these latter days, are in a more fortunate position, for we have before us, 
historically revealed, the ideal man, in Christ Jesus, in a far more perfect 
form than the Greeks were able to conceive of. For the principle of Pro- 
tagoras, "MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS," we can now sub- 
stitute, "CHRIST IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS PERTAINING 
TO HUMAN LIFE," and thus attain the highest and most effective ex- 
pression of the Law of Temperance. 

"Christ is the Measure of All Things." Applied to present day con- 
ditions in our country, notably to the growing tendency to declare the use 
and sale of beer, wine and other liquors, not only a transgression of the 
Law of Temperance, but a crime even, we find that while St. John, the 
forerunner and herald of Christ, lived in the desert, abstaining not only 
from wine, but from all rich food (unless we look upon wild honey as a 
rich food), the Master used wine on every occasion that presented itself. 
But in the. days of St. John, the Baptist, it may have been proper to fast 
for awhile, for the Light, the Bridegroom, had not yet arrived, even as at 
times, as the present almost are, when true enlightenment, mutual for- 
bearance and the spirit of human kinship have sunk to a low level, the 
spirit of prohibition is abroad, throwing its gloomy and oppressive shadow 
over the hearts of men. But when the Master arrives and proclaims the 
true spirit of love and the ethical application of the Law of Temperance, 
it is time to be joyous and open-hearted, to be innocently and openly glad 
with one another as children of One Father. Even so wherever and when- 
ever hearts are tempered by truth and enlightenment, it happens that 
whatever a man likes to take into his body should only add its mite, to his 
well-being. For nothing is truer than this that whatsoever increases a 
man's content and cheerfulness works for a better humanity, a higher 
civilization, nay, for the Kingdom of God. True Temperance makes men 
sober at, heart, prohibition alone can only make them act as if they were 
so. Only the weakest and wickedest hearts need guidance and external 
restraint in all things; but because some men will be drunkards shall all 
men be treated as possible and probable drunkards ? Let it be remembered 
also that John the Baptist did not impose his ascetic manner of living 
upon others, nor did he presume to declare that because of his asceticism 
he was better than other people who lived normally. Wisdom becomes 
ever justified of her children, and the children of the world of the present 
day seem thus to have more of the true divine life than those who would 
without further ado stamp them as slaves and criminals. 



II. 

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRIST TOWARDS DRINKING. 
St. Paul and Other Great Men. 

The Christian religion was from the very beginning acclaimed as the 
motive power behind the prohibition movement, and from the very be- 
ginning of this movement to the present day the zealous people who be- 
lieve in prohibition under all circumstances have been shouting from the 
house tops that they were working for, and in the name of, the Christian 
religion. With such constancy and vigor have they flourished the Christian 
religion as their banner in their propaganda that today the. weaker and 
more purely mechanical members of Christian churches consider an ab- 
stainer as practically identical with a Christian, and a non-abstainer as 
practically the same as a non-Christian! But the cornerstone, the very 
life and soul, of the Christian religion is Jesus Christ. Hence the sur- 
passing importance of Christ's attitude towards the use of wine, that is, 
alcoholic beverages as such. 

The New Testament, which is, as it were, the constitution of the 
Christian church (if the New Testament can be at all compared to a legal 
document), and the Book of Books, establishes beyond controversy that 
of all great and notable men the greatest and most notable of them all, 
Jesus Christ, has paid the highest tribute to the fruit of the vine, even 
the fermented fruit of the vine. 

Christ Provides Wine in Large Quantities as Something Better Than 

Water. 

In the very first miracle (remember, the very first that is recorded) 
that he was called on to perform, at the wedding of Canaan, Christ trans- 
formed six large pitchers or pots of water into wine. (St. John ii:l-10.) 
He did this not at the beginning of the feast, when no one has as yet 
drunk any wine, but at the end of it, when all the wine that had been pro- 
vided for, probably as the occasion required, in generous quantities, had 
been drunk up. What striking contrast does not Christ's conduct offer 
to that of a modern prohibitionist ! It is noteworthy that Christ was not, 
on that occasion of heart-opening joyousness, called on to replenish bread, 
or meat, or milk, or honey, or figs, or cake, but wine, only wine, the fer- 
mented fruit of the vine, and that he did this gladly and without hesita- 
tion. The amount furnished by him was very large. The Bible states that 
each ''pot" contained between two or three firkins. A firkin being about 
equal to nine gallons, the total quantity of wine furnished by Christ on 
that occasion was between 432 and 648 quarts, or between 4320 and 6480 
ordinary modern wine glasses, a quantity which was enough to provide 
every adult citizen of Canaan with several glasses, if we suppose Canaan 
to have, been a town of as many as 5,000 inhabitants and every citizen as 
being present at the feast. But it is unreasonable to suppose, in view of 
the small buildings used in that country at the time, that more than a few 
hundred guests, at the most, were, present at the wedding, so that, by 
figuring the number of guests to have been about three hundred, there 
were at least ten glasses for each guest in the amount furnished by Christ, 
a quantity which would be considered rather excessive at a modern ban- 
quet. The Bible does not state how much was drunk previously, but it 
may be inferred that the quantity was considerable from the fact that the 
"governor of the feast" commented on the fine quality of the wine 
furnished by Jesus, while he failed to intimate that the quantity deserved 
any particular commendation. 

In St. John, Chapter XV, Christ is recorded as paying one of the most 

5 



eloquent literal tributes to the. wine-producing" vine in that beautiful 
passage which begins: "I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that 
abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit," etc. 
This simile, is not only eloquent in its simplicity and directness, but also 
potent with implied meaning, in so much as in the country in which Jesus 
lived the grape-vine was valued mostly on account of the wine, the fer- 
mented fruit of the vine, which was produced from it. - 

Christ, Drinking Wine, Scathingly Denounces the Abstemious Pharisees. 

The opponents and enemies of Christ — Pharisees, priests and scribes — 
often referred to him as a wine-bibber, thus condemning what, in com- 
parison with their own more abstemious lives, seemed intemperance to 
them. The Pharisees, we must remember, were noted for their exemplary 
lives; they conducted themselves with the strictest adherence to the laws 
and regulations of Moses; they were pointed out as patterns of law- 
abiding citizens in the theocratic government which was still assumed to 
hover over Palestine. Notwithstanding which passion for all that was 
lawful and according to law, notwithstanding their apparent ethical purity, 
they were hostile to Christ, and he retaliated by assailing them bitterly 
on many occasions, calling those "vipers" and "whited sepulchers" who 
were the exponents of formal and legalistic virtue, in word as well as in 
act. Christ was the "wine-bibber" and "glutton," but they were model 
citizens, the prohibitionists of their day! Should not this fact make any- 
one think twice before he decides that prohibition is the right method 
to bring about true temperance? It is needless to say that in reality it 
was Christ who was absolutely temperate, and that it was the Pharisees, 
the prohibitionists of their day, who were intemperate in feeling and 
thought, intolerant in their attitude, hardened and bleached to death by 
their spiritual pride. 

Christ Honors Wine Above All Other Drinks, Using It as a Symbol of 

the Higher Baptism. 

If Christ honored the fruit of the vine in his first public act, he be- 
stowed even greater distinction upon it in the last social meeting he had 
with those nearest to him. In the Last Supper, the farewell gathering 
with his disciples, he compared the fermented juice of the vine to his own 
flesh and blood which was shed for the remission of sins (Matth. xxvi: 
26, 29) : * 

"And he took the cup and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 
Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is 
shed for many for the remission of sins." Indeed, there is nothing more 
fittingly comparable to the blood of pure, unselfish love than the juice of 
the fruit of the vine after it has become cleared and purified, by fer- 
mentation, of its grosser elements, changed its murky and muddy color to 
a beautiful transparency, and exchanged an unenduring transient state 
for a quality which lasts practically forever and grows still slowly finer 
and finer as the years go by. Wine is the drink for those who are sound 
uf body and pure in mind ; it is a drink for the grown and mature, a drink 
for men specially prepared and administered, it is also good for many who 
are physically impaired, but it is certainly not good for physical weakling's 
ard moral sicklings. How beautiful and full of significance is Christ's 
admonition on this occasion: "Do this to my memory!" I think I have 
sufficient spiritual insight to understand that Christ did not mean to 
attach special importance to the wine as such; it was merely the means 
which he used for his purpose, the symbol through which he expressed 
his thought; the thought, namely, that one idea, one purpose, one life 
should animate them all hereafter, as though the same and identical blood 



were flowing through their veins and pulsing through their hearts, and 
that this blood was his own blood, t. i., his own life. But would he have 
employed anything to illustrate his great purpose and thought which was 
not in itself good and proper? Would he not have used something which 
was not only expressive of the symbol to be conveyed, but also in itself 
pure and without reproach? Or do you believe that he had adopted the 
famous (or infamous) maxim, that the end always sanctifies the means? 
Christ is a master in using symbols from nature for illustrating his 
thought and giving it immediate and forcible expression. Thus he speaks 
of "the lilies of the field" when he renders his opinion, incidentally, as to 
what constitutes a simple and beautiful dress; he refers to the "birds in 
the heaven" when he wishes to describe a happy and joyous existence; he 
describes his own affection for the children of Jerusalem by comparing it 
to a "hen spreading out her wings over her chicks." Besides, in the case 
of the last supper, he not only employs the wine as a beautiful symbol, 
but, incidentally, he drinks it, which act, according to the notions of our 
over-zealous prohibitionists, in itself would constitute a sin. It may be 
added that Christ on this occasion, as on others, did not merely sip or 
taste wine, but that he took a full, manly drink. Furthermore, he asks 
his disciples to continue to do this thing. To be sure, as I already ex- 
plained, he primarily and fundamentally asks them to live his own life, 
yet incidentally and by direct implication he also asks them to be humanly 
and fraternally sociable by whatsoever means they might accomplish that 
end, eating bread and drinking wine being one of the legitimate means 
that might be thus employed, for that was the means used by himself 
personally. He certainly would not have asked them, either by injunction 
or example, either expressly or by implication, to use any means which 
could have harmed them or any children or men physically or morally. 

Christ Made Wine, as a Rule, Says Lyman Abbott. 

Christ's attitude toward the spirit of prohibition is succinctly summed 
up by Lyman Abbott, the well-known preacher and thinker : 

"It was not the method of Jesus. He lived in an age of total abstinence 
societies, and did not join them. He emphasized the distinction between 
his methods and those of John the Baptist ; that John came neither eating 
nor drinking, the Son of Man came eating and drinking. He condemned 
drunkenness, but never in a single instance lifted up his voice in condem- 
nation of drinking. On the contrary, he commenced his public ministry by 
making, as a rule, wine in considerable quantity, and of fine quality, and 
this apparently only to add to the joyous festivities of a wedding." 

Many will be surprised to hear Dr. Abbott's interpretation that Christ 
made wine, as a rule, but this interpretation is undoubtedly the right one, 
as is evidenced by the request addressed to him by his mother at the 
wedding of Canaan: "They have no wine," thus obviously taking for 
granted that it was his function, if not his habit, to supply wine at festi- 
vals. 

We feel, therefore, justified in insisting that no man has ever more 
fully, more emphatically and more beautifully sanctioned the use of wine 
as a drink than Jesus Christ, the founder and cornerstone of that religion 
in whose name the prohibition propaganda has been primarily waged 
to this day. This fact is so simply, so plainly, so forcibly and so unequivo- 
cally revealed in the Gospel that no one in whose mind the child is not 
entirely extinguished can fail to notice it at a glance. If anyone can dis- 
prove this assertion, we shall be very glad to hear from him, but the proof 
must be drawn from the words and life of Christ, and from nothing else, 
leastof all, from the pronouncements of anyone who cannot see that pro- 
hibition and temperance do not necessarily go together. 

7 



"Touch Not, Handle Not, Taste Not," a Maxim for Slaves, Says St. Paul. 

If we now proceed from the attitude taken by Christ concerning the 
use of wine to that of his apostles, we find that all of them drank wine. 
We find, further, that the wisest and philosophically profoundest among 
these apostles, St. Paul, the great expositor of Christ's life and teachings, 
makes, in Colossians ii:20-23, a most significant utterance, part of which 
consists of the famous words: "Touch not, taste not, handle not." No 
passage in the Bible has been so much exploited by the prohibitionists and 
other over-zealous partisans as this ; no passage has been so brazenly and 
persistently abused. For the prohibitionist and the perfervid total ab- 
stainer (the kind of abstainer who will forcibly impose his abstaining 
upon others) have again and again quoted this passage from the Bible 
as a most emphatic injunction against the use of wine or liquor in any 
form, and even in the smallest quantities. As a matter of fact, this passage 
implies as nearly as possible the exact opposite of the meaning forced 
into it by the propagandists who have cited it so freely, and, shall we say, 
so ignorantly or hypocritically. St. Paul, namely, severely rebukes in 
this passage those who exaggerate the importance of the incidental regu- 
lations of life, and who are puffed up with the careful observance of them, 
thus forgetting the fundamental issue, "the Head," while straining at 
gnats and chasing vain shadows. He says : 

"Wherefore, if you be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the 
world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances 
(touch not, taste not, handle not; which all are to perish with the using) 
after the commandments and doctrines of men, which things have indeed 
a show in will-worship, and humility and neglecting of the body; not in, 
any honor to the satisfying of the flesh." 

St. Paul could not possibly make it plainer that the "Touch not, taste 
not, handle not" people have not the right idea of the spirit of Christianity; 
that, in fact, they are doing their best to make the sacrifice of Christ 
of no avail, and substitute therefor rules and laws and ordinances of 
their own; that they please themselves by restraining their will and 
power to act, rather than to give that will an opportunity to unfold itself 
according to the example set by Christ ; that, indeed, by these petty regu- 
lations they are endeavoring to work out their own salvation in accordance 
with their own notions, thereby making themselves spiritually conceited 
and "puffed up"; in fine, St. Paul makes it plain that the ordinance 
"touch not, taste not, handle not" is a law for slaves, not for Christians- 
slaves who prefer their own self-made fetters to the freedom and life of 
Christ. 

St. Paul also makes it plain on other occasions that, in his opinion, 
those are led astray who make the matter of eating and drinking a subject 
of primary importance in endeavoring to realize the true life as given by 
Christ. Here we must bear in mind that in the time of Christ and St. 
Paul intemperance in eating was stigmatized as much as intemperance in 
drinking or any other intemperance of a similar kind. Thus we find in 
Romans xiv: "For one believeth that he may eat all things; another. 
who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that 
eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth; for 
God hath received him. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth 
God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and he 
giveth God thanks." 

In other words, whether a man drink or eat, or whatever he drink 
or eat, does not make any difference in his favor before God. Whether he 
eat or drink, or not, let him do it or not do it with the right heart and 
the right motive, and his moral worth as such will be unaltered. Only if 

8 



a man either eat or drink with offense may he be adjudged guilty, St. 
Paul declares in the same chapter, 20-21. It is in the same spirit that 
Mary, the mother of our Lord, said to the servants at the wedding in 
Canaan, where Christ turned water into wine : "Whatsoever he saith unto 
you, do it." For it signifies absolutely nothing whether a man drink or not; 
all that signifies is that he do God's will in doing everything to His honor. 

What a vast difference between the attitude taken by Christ and 
St. Paul, on the one hand, and the modern Pharisees, our good prohibition- 
ists, on the other ! 

The attitude of modern religious leaders and reformers on this ques- 
tion was likewise rational and sensible. Luther's appreciation of "good 
cheer" is well known ; the austere John Calvin partook daily of wine, while 
John Wesley, the father of Methodism, and who is more particularly sup- 
posed to be the chief progenitor of the modern prohibition movement, ex- 
pressly says that "Christianity does not require" abstention from wine. 
Wesley also refers to wine as "one of the noblest cordials of nature." 
(Tyerman's Life of Wesley.) 

And if we should ask the opinion of men of genius with regard to the 
drink question, we can conclude this chapter by quoting from the "Auto- 
crat of the Breakfast Table" : "Sir, I repudiate the vulgarism (of calling 
all alcoholic beverages rum) as an insult to the first miracle wrought by 
the Founder of our religion. (And, therefore, let us add, an insult to the 
Founder himself.) I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, for 
healthy people. I trust I practice both. But let me tell there are com- 
panies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere 
of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that 
if I thought fit to take wine it would be to keep me sober. Among the 
gentlemen I have known few, if any, were ruined by drinking. Mv few 
drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunk- 
ards. * * * Men get intoxicated with music, with poetry, with re- 
ligious excitement, oftenest with love." 

III. 

MOHAMMED FORBIDS THE USE OF WINE. IN CONTRADISTINC- 
TION TO CHRIST, HE IS THE GREATEST PROHIBITIONIST 

IN HISTORY. 

Having seen that the founder as well as the chief exponents of the 
world's greatest religion in ancient and modern times take an ex- 
tremely liberal attitude toward the matter or drinking, we will turn our 
attention to certain nations who derive their moral precepts and the 
rules for their conduct of life from a religious creed which was founded 
and established only a few centuries after the birth of the Christian re- 
ligion and in a country which is practically contiguous to Palestine, and in 
which nearly the same, natural conditions with regard to climate, etc., pre- 
vail. This circumstance must be borne in mind, because it may be averred 
that at the time of Christ the ill effects of the intemperate use of wine 
were not so apparent as they are now, and that for this reason Christ's at- 
titude regarding the drinking of wir Q was so liberal that he himself freely 
indulged on occasions. 

Mohammed, the founder of the religious creed which is named after 
him and which at the present day counts more than two hundred millions 
of adherents, expressly and specifically forbids the use of alcoholic drinks, 
especially wine. This prohibition is considered an essential part of their 
religion by all Moslems in all parts of the world, so that the believer who 
uses wine commits a serious sin. 

Now why did Mohammed, living only a few centuries after Christ, in 

9 



a country adjacent to the one in which Christ lived and acted in the body, 
forbid the use of wine to his followers, while this indulgence was not only 
permitted, but even approved by Christ? THE PRINCIPAL REASON IS 
THE GREAT MORAL SUPERIORITY OF CHRIST OVER MOHAMMED. 
This can be said without any qualification and without throwing any im- 
proper reflection on Mohammed who was himself one of the world's great- 
est and most remarkable men. In comparison with Christ's, Mohammed's 
vision was dim ; he could not free himself from the notion that petty rules 
and regulations are an essential part of all true religions. He had found 
these petty rules in nearly all other religions that he had examined and he 
concluded that he must also make a liberal use of them, being, unlike 
Christ, utterly unable to transcend them. To Mohammed the life of the 
believer was something that was largely shaped for him by conditions and 
rules. He also emphasized the element of predestinations, thus making it 
appear that what was not determined by outward conditions was cer- 
tainly due to internal or supernatural conditions. Christ, on the other 
hand, makes his disciples as one with the Eternal Life, veritable sons of 
the Universal Father. Furthermore, the people who were to be Moham- 
med's followers were not a settled nation like the Hebrews, but consisted 
more largely of nomadic tribes, warlike Arabs who had not the moral 
training of the Israelites. Nomadic tribes do not cultivate the. vine or 
work regularly in agricultural pursuits ; they depend largely on conquests 
to obtain these things, and when they possess themselves on such occa- 
sions of stores of liquor, they naturally indulge to excess. Mohammed un- 
doubtedly was witness at one time or another, of such excesses and of the 
evil results thereof in such inflammable people as the Arabs. But cer- 
tainly the manner in which a constantly warring, unsettled race conducts 
and regulates its existence is neither productive of a civilized state nor 
can be looked upon as an example to be followed by the world at large. 
Neither can a religious system especially adapted to such a people be a 
perfect one or one that may be adopted universally. 

So if Mohammed says: "Thou shalt not drink wine," while Christ by 
his own example shows that drinking wine is not only in itself sinless, but 
may be indulged in to human advantage or as a harmless if not beneficient 
feature of man's manner of living, it is not difficult to choose between the 
two and recognize that Christ's attitude is beyond all comparison the bet- 
ter of the two, from a natural as well as from a moral standpoint. 

It deserves to be noted in this connection that although Mohammed 
recognizes Jesus as a great prophet, putting him in a class with Abraham 
and Moses, he considers himself as greater than Christ and as having su- 
perseded him; in fact, Mohammed thinks that, finally and ultimately, he 
is the only true prophet of God or Allah, all other prophets being merely 
his forerunners. 

There were other great religious teachers who explicitly forbade or 
restricted the use of wine and other alcoholic beverages. Thus, for in- 
stance, the mystic person who is the founder of Buddhism incorporated 
in his moral code the injunction: "Thou shalt not become intoxicated," 
this injunction being the fifth law of the Buddhistic decalogue. But it 
will be noticed that unlike Mohammedanism, Buddhism does not outright 
forbid the drinking of wine or other alcoholic beverages, but merely the ex- 
cessive use thereof, "not to become intoxicated," an attitude which, partly 
at least, coincides with that of true Christianity as exemplified by Christ 
himself. So that it may be said that the second greatest of all religions, 
Buddhism, agrees with Christianity with regard to the drink question. 

As prohibition was established by the Mohammedan races consider- 
ably more than a thousand years before Christians seriously thought of 

10 



making men temperate, by these means, so the Chinese government for- 
bade the use of intoxicants eleven centuries before Christ, e. i., as long as 
three thousand years ago. Does it not seem a serious reflection on the 
growth and true understanding of the Christian spirit that a Christian 
nation should try to solve a sociological problem by methods employed 
thousands of years ago by admittedly inferior civilizations and by relig- 
ious creeds presumed to be less perfect than the Christian, and that in 
direct contravention to the example so obviously and strikingly set by the 
great founder of the Christian religion ! 

IV. 

SUMMARY COMPARISON OF CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE 

DRINK PROBLEM AND THE ATTITUDE OF THE 

PROHIBITIONISTS. 

As Christ is the Measure in All Things for all men and especially for 
Christians, we may now, after having examined his standpoint on the 
question of temperance, and more particularly with regard to drinking 
wine, make a direct and summarized comparison of his attitude with 
that of our prohibitionists. 

Christ invoked even his supernatural powers (habitually, says Lyman 
Abbott) to supply wine to the people, and he did not in a single instance 
utter a word against the sale of wine. 

OUR PROHIBITIONISTS would make the selling, buying and giving 
away of wine and liquor, in any form and even in the smallest quantities, 
a crime, and they brand all those as sinners and criminals who supply 
liquor to the public, thus making according to their notions, CHRIST HIM- 
SELF APPEAR AS A DELIBERATE SINNER AND THEMSELVES 
SUPERIOR TO HIM AND BETTER THAN HE. 

CHRIST himself indulged freely in wine, thus showing by his own 
example, which is always forcible and to the point, that this indulgence is 
as natural as harmless, and that it is good to drink in moderation to make 
the heart glad. 

OUR PROHIBITIONISTS hold everyone using wine or any other alco- 
holic liquor, no matter how diluted or weak, in contempt, as being neither 
a true Christian nor an irreproachable citizen. Their attitude reduces 
Christ not only to a "winebibber," as the Pharisees (the prohibitionists 
of his day) called him, but to A WEAK AND DANGEROUS MAN WHO 
BY HIS EXAMPLE MIGHT LEAD THOUSANDS, IF NOT MILLIONS, 
ASTRAY. 

CHRIST honored wine on one of the most solemn occasions of his life 
by drinking and using it as a symbol of his very blood and life. There was 
nothing preventing him from using water or milk or diluted honey or fig 
juice, but he didn't. Out of all the possible beverages that he might have 
used, he chose one which, when taken intemperately, by weak individuals, 
will cause drunkenness. 

OUR PROHIBITIONISTS, on the other hand, consider all fermented 
and distilled liquor as no better than a concoction of the devil, as is wit- 
nessed, for instance, by the fanatic zeal with which they will destroy large 
quantities of liquor whenever they have an opportunity to do so. In par- 
taking of the Lord's Supper, they generally still use wine, but in view of 
their conviction that the ordinary use of wine is sinful, their use of it in 
the Lord's sacrament seems a highly hypocritical if not a contemptuous 
performance, and, strictly speaking, although they do not seem to know it, 
they dishonor the symbol as well as the sacrament itself. Moreover, Christ 

." 11 



in the Last Supper did not merely wet his tongue as a matter of ceremony, 
but drank like a man, gently and softly, satisfying a natural want. 

CHRIST refused to join the prohibitionists of his day and become a 
total abstainer, wherefore those prohibitionists called him a glutton and a 
winebibber. 

OUR PROHIBITIONISTS practically hold that anyone who differs in 
his views on temperance from them and therefore refuses to join their 
ranks is not, strictly speaking, a Christian, THUS DECLARING, BY DI- 
RECT INFERENCE, THAT CHRIST HIMSELF WAS NOT A CHRIS- 
TIAN. THEY, THEREFORE, CONSTANTLY CALL HIM SOMETHING 
MUCH WORSE THAN A GLUTTON AND A WINEBIBBER. 

Whom Shall We Follow — Jesus Christ or Mohammed? 

Verily, St. Paul's condemnation, above quoted, of those who put the 
little things and their own conceit in place of the life that Christ means 
us to have, applies with much greater force to the professional prohibi- 
tionists of our day. 

It may be asserted that conditions have changed so much since the 
time of Christ that an indulgence which he could permit himself in his 
day, is productive of much evil in our country and in our times. But 
drunkenness and intemperance is equally an evil at all times, and drunken- 
ness as such was well recognized .in his time as an evil and the Pharisees 
condemned not only drunkenness, but even moderate drinking, and Christ 
was accordingly severely denounced because he refused to abstain, We 
find further, for instance, that the apparent mental vigor exhibited by 
the apostles, after the Holy Ghost had descended upon them, was decried 
by many as being nothing but wine-inspired eloquence. ("These men are 
full of new wine.") In I Corinthians, 11:20-22, Paul makes such reference 
to drunkenness: "When therefore ye assemble yourselves together, it is 
impossible to eat the Lord's supper: for in your eating each one taketh 
before other his own supper: and one is hungry and another is drunken." 
Likewise in Ephesians (5:18) : "And be not drunk with wine wherein is 
excess." Moreover, as we have seen, Mohammed, who lived only six cen- 
turies after Christ and under the same climatic conditions, considered 
drinking wine sufficiently as a vice to forbid its use altogether. WTiom are 
we to follow as our Supreme Moral Guide and Leader, Mohammed or 
Christ? Y\ 7 hose words and example shed the greater light and give the 
truer life? Our professional prohibitionists assert incessantly that they 
are working solely for Christ's kingdom, but as a matter of fact nothing 
can be more certain than that in prohibiting the use of wine or other alco- 
holic liquor in order to produce among men the outward semblance of 
temperance, they are emphatically and unequivocally followers of Moham- 
med and not of Christ, and that they just as emphatically and unequivo- 
cally denounce by implication the tolerant attitude of Christ who taught 
men that virtue was a quality of the soul to be valued for its own sake 
and not because of the material advantages that might arise to him that 
acts it. It is the law of Mohammed which our prohibitionists are endeav- 
oring to realize with such zeal and earnestness in our country in direct and 
passionate contravention of the example of Christ. Regarding this point, 
therefore, they have really no right whatever to call themselves Christians ; 
they ought to call themselves what they are — Mohhammedans or Moslems. 
Nor is their treatment and attempted solution of the drink problem the 
only striking point of resemblance between the Mohammedans and them- 
selves. As Mohammed, while admitting Jesus to be a prophet on an equal- 
ity with Abraham, Moses and others, considers himself as having super- 
seded Christ and as greater than he, so our prohibitionists, in word as 

12 



well as act, agree with Mohammed in his estimate of himself. A further 
similarity between prohibitionism and Mohammedism is found in the fact 
that both favor the use of legalized force, reinforced by any other force 
that might be handy, to put their doctrine into effective general practice. 
The Mohammedan has great respect for the power of the sword for this 
purpose, while the prohibitionist makes use of lobbies, blacklisting, intimi- 
dation, etc. (Only recently a local paper, noted forits hypocrisy and un- 
fair methods, urged strongly that the city of St. .Louis be commercially 
blacklisted on account of its stand on prohibition!) 

Those preachers particularly who are always talking "liquor, liquor," 
ought really to consider themselves specialized Mohammedan dervishes 
working off their frenzy and deeming themselves in their own conceit bet- 
ter and wiser than Christ. Not that I mean to imply that all, or even 
most, preachers who believe in prohibition are of that kind. I have known 
some such preachers whom I esteem highly even as preachers and whom I 
consider men of great ability, strong men, sincere men, men who in many 
ways seem to be born spiritual leaders. But preachers of high ability who 
are true disciples of Christ do not, as a rule, make prohibition one of the 
primary goals of their endeavors, still less their only and chief goal ; they 
know that the world is full of far more insidious sins and forms of intem- 
perance than intemperance by drinking; they know that drinking intem- 
perately is often more an effect than a cause ; they know that the church 
of Christ works by faith and not by legalized force, and that it surrenders 
its true and exalted function when it substitutes law for faith and when 
preachers are politicians rather than ethical and ecclesiastical shepherds. 

A Congregational minister who was ousted from the Association of 
Congregational Churches and Ministers because he endeavored to follow 
in the footsteps of his Master on the question of temperance, relates that 
another minister of that church confessed to him that he was much better 
off financially as a prohibition propagandist than he ever had been as a 
regular pastor, inasmuch as he was now getting 60 per cent of all the 
money he could collect from churches and private persons, the remaining 
40 per cent going to the national prohibition officers from whom he re- 
ceived his territory. We may add that it also requires a much smaller 
degree of ability to be such a propagandist than a regular pastor, as the 
latter must prepare two different sermons each week and must keep him- 
self more or less conversant with the multiplicity of subjects which com- 
prise human life in its relation to religion, while the former can make one 
and the same speech do all the year around and get along by studying just 
one subject and that one not very well, for he will ignore the Bible when- 
ever it suits him on the one hand, and, in the last analysis, also the actual 
conditions in the lives of men. He can, of course, prove anything if you 
grant him the premises which he submits as facts, but he does not under- 
take to prove these alleged facts in their fundamental bearings and inter- 
relations, and neither does his audience. 

If the second-rate ministers who are not able enough to maintain them- 
selves as regular pastors and who do not know enough of God's purpose 
(even where it is plainly revealed) or man's destiny to make an impression 
except by singing the same old song of liquor and urging the substitution 
of law for faith and grace will continue to hold swav, it is only a question 
of time when the Church of Christ will be turned into a vaudeville show 
for the special benefit of the anti-liquor societies, anti-tobacco societies, or 
anti-something societies. That would mean the death knell of the true 
and inspirational work of the church. 

The writer is reminded here of a friend of his, a Baptist minister, 
who was an unconditional prohibitionist of the most pronounced tvpe; 
in fact, the leader of the prohibition faction in his town, and who later 

13 



on became a traveling propagandist. He was not only ardent and tire- 
less in denouncing the sale and use of liquor, but equally emphatic 
against the use of tobacco. The writer heard him declaim once: "I 
never could see what anyone could find in this foul and .nasty weed (to- 
bacco), I never could understand how any man could endure to carry 
around one of those vile and disgusting tobacco pipes. If he would 
throw it on the street, not a dog would smell at it," etc. Now it hap- 
pened that this minister had a son, a very popular and, indeed, lovable 
young man of whom the father was very fond. The son, although a 
clean and temperate boy in every way, would not hesitate to take a 
drink occasionally, and, moreover, he often smoked and always carried 
a tobacco pipe around in his mouth. One day the writer, without mak- 
ing any reference to the well-known fact that the son occasionally 

drank, asked the father: "How is it, Dr. , that you, who are such 

a bitter opponent of the use of tobacco, yet allow your son to smoke a 
pipe without molestation whenever he is so inclined ?" Just a percepti- 
ble shadow of embarrassment flitted across the preacher's brow before 
he. answered: "Well, you see, my son does not really smoke. He merely 
carries that pipe around with him, because it is a souvenir and because 

he is so fond of it." "No, Dr. ," I replied, "allow me to say that 

the reason you let your son smoke while publicly you denounce smoking 
is that in relation to your son you are sensible and human, while in 
your public declarations you go out of your true self and are less sin- 
cere than you are in relation to your son." 

The man looked at me with wide open eyes and made no reply. He 
has not made a reply to this day. 

Spiritual Degeneration the Cause of Emotional Drunkenness. 

In view of this perversion of Christianity which has been exem- 
plified by Christ, is it any wonder that a so-called evangelist can travel 
through the country and defile, in the name of Christ, the ears of men 
and women with language which often becomes so base, so indescrib- 
ably vile, that any other man who would utter such words in the pres- 
ence of gentlemen or ladies would not be tolerated in their company for 
a moment; a man who, for instance, in his sermon on dancing brands 
our women as inherently so vicious and so sin-inspiring that their 
touch, especially in dancing, is always defiling; a man who paints God as 
a universal devil, who takes an infinite, insatiable delight in consigning 
men to fire and brimstone for their natural weaknesses. Yet this man 
has been immeasurably lauded and worshipped by a hypocritical and 
cowardly press, and being well paid by the promoters and a vaudeville- 
loving multitude, is growing enormously rich. If this man were a great 
religious leader it would, of course, be eminently proper for ali men, 
women and children to emulate him and adopt his language. Just imag- 
ine our women and children flinging about in their daily talk, the vile 
expressions and unspeakable vituperations of this spiritual degenerate! 
But if it were possible to pervert our women and children to the extent 
that they would talk like this man, we would have only ourselves to 
blame, and we would behold only the fruit of our hypocrisy. Moreover, 
since this man, like others of his kind, denounces adultery, gambling, 
prostitution, etc., in the same breath and on the same grounds as drink- 
ing (not drunkenness only, but just drinking!), it takes no stretch of the 
imagination to see that he puts the Lord Jesus Christ in a class with the 
adulterer, the prostitute and the gambler. Can anyone say that such 
vicious and unbridled intemperance of speech, calculated to arouse and 
inflame emotional intemperance and reduce religious services to the level 

14 



of a coarse vaudeville show, can possibly be. the source of true temper- 
ance in any way ? Is not such emotional intemperance the most favorable 
condition for breeding all sorts of popular hysterias which will cloud the 
judgment and lead people astray from the serious business that confronts 
them? Judging all things by their effects or "fruits," is not vicious 
speech, ethically, on a level with "swearing," aye, sometimes even worse 
than the worst kind of cursing? Do you believe that mental and moral 
intemperance will help to overcome physical intemperance? Is it not 
rather apparent that this kind of intemperance will in the end prove one 
of the strongest allies of all other kinds of intemperance? 

Nor must it be forgotten that it is the temperate mind, the mind 
that can control itself, although it will readily rise on the wings of en- 
thusiasm, which will be the most successful and most effective in busi- 
ness as well as in emergencies. This is especially true in times like the 
present, when the safety of the nation must depend on the men who 
have the temper of steel, readily striking fire when necessary, but never 
losing their self-control. The safety of our country could not be left to 
those apron-stringed boys who never grow up, nor to those, men whose 
mouths gush over with evil-smelling words, especially when such words 
are shamelessly launched under the banner of righteousness and religion. 

Hence the tremendous importance of temperance of mind and soul, 

a temperance, which is of much more significance and consequence than 
mere physical temperance. Mental and moral temperance are more apt 
to be enduring and permanent because the cause — a principle, an idea, a 
memory — will endure, while purely physical temperance may pass away 
with the external cause or barrier. Mental and moral temperance always 
begets and includes physical temperance, but physical temperance can 
very well exist side by side with the worst cases of mental and moral in- 
temperance, as witness, for instance, the so-called evangelistic propa- 
gandists above referred to, who are frequently neither temperate in 
speech nor conscientiously truthful in their statements and utterances, 
and who are often recruited from men that were formerly physical 
drunkards according to their own confessions. Thus it is that we are 
expected to learn temperance from the uncanny afterglow of drunken de- 
baucheries and burnt-out desires rather than from the pure reflections of 
the true, manly, fearless and whole-hearted temperance of Christ! 



WHAT NATIONS HAVE USED AND ARE USING ALCOHOLIC 

BEVERAGES? 

Let us now turn our attention to a very brief historical examination 
of the regard in which the fermented juice of the vine, as well as other 
fermented and distilled liquor has been held by the leading nation of 
ancient and modern times. 

The Greeks, the most highly civilized people of antiquity, used wine 
regularly at all times, although it appears that the most warlike tribe 
among them, the Spartans, liked a strong soup, made of fresh blood 
animals, as well as wine. It must be remembered, however, that the 
Spartans, although the most efficient warriors of Greece, were far inferior 
to the Athenians in general human culture, the arts and those intellectual 
accomplishments whose fruits have become the heritage of all ages. It is 
the Athenians chiefly who made Ancient Greece immortal, not the less 
indulgent Spartans. The Greeks indeed held oinos, the fermented fruit 

15 



of the vine, in such esteem that its introduction into Greece and its culture 
was ascribed to one of the leading deities, namely, Dionysos. 

The world-conquering Romans used wine daily with their meals, very 
much as we use coffee and tea, etc. Like the Greeks, they drank it 
regularly and used it in their sacrificial rites, as you can easily convince 
yourself in reading the leading Latin authors. 

The Ancient Germans (which name includes the forebears of the 
Germans of today, as well as of the English, Danes, Dutch, and to a 
great extent even the French) drank a liquid called Met or Mead which 
was made by fermentation from honey. When the Germans learnt from 
the. Romans to drink of the superior grape wine, they abandoned the 
use of Met. But they always remained temperate, although they always 
drank. 

Among the modern nations, we find that the peoples who are the 
leaders in civilization are without exception users of .alcoholic liquors, 
especially wine and beer. Notable among these are the French, English, 
Germans, Italians, Americans and Japanese, etc., as well as such smaller 
nations as the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, etc. The French and Italians 
as well as the Germans have long been noted for their temperateness. 
But in recent years the drinking of distilled liquor, especially absinthe, 
seems to have turned Frenchmen somewhat from their traditional wine- 
drinking sobriety. Of the Italians, who perhaps have always consumed 
more wine than any other nation and among whom drunkenness was 
practically unknown, it is now also said that in recent years some intem- 
perance has disclosed itself here and there among them as a result of 
the consumption of strong distilled liquor, a habit which has been trans- 
planted to Italy from South America. The temperateness of the Germans 
is due to their predilection for beer and light wines. The English and 
Americans have not the reputation of the French and Italians for sobriety, 
partly because they have always indulged more or less in stronger liquor 
than wine or beer, and, partly, on account of climatic and other condi- 
tions, while the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Scotch have long been 
among the drunkenest nations chiefly because they used until very re- 
centlv almost exclusively distilled liquor of the strongest kind. But the 
English, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Scotch and Americans have all en- 
deavored for many years to make themselves more temperate by legislation 
and propaganda, with the difference, however, that while the Swedes, 
Norwegians, Danes and even the English have worked wisely and scien- 
tifically and, therefore, with a considerable measure of success, in our 
own country this very important work has been left largely to unscientific 
zealots and paid professional propagandists, with the result that our 
efforts have, by far in most cases, not only ended in failure, but have 
even served to intensify intemperance in drinking and in other things, 
so that now we have a great deal of prohibition, but much less real 
temperance than formerly. 

If we compare the nations above mentioned with the Russians, 
who in spite of many strong qualities have been culturally back- 
ward, we come to some surprising conclusions. We find that wine 
never 'became universally popular in Russia and that the Russians, when 
thev drink, show strong preference for a distilled liquor of inferior 
quality, called vodka, and that they are extremely prone to excessive 
indulgence, and that, though on the whole much less liquor is consumed 
in Russia than in the western countries, a great deal more of pronounced 
drunkenness can be observed in Russia than in those countries where 
fermented iiauor, wine and beer are drunk universally, t.i., by all classes 
of people and by practicallv all ages. We also find that these Russians, 
who fluctuate between total abstinence and drunkenness (the upper and 

16 



nether grinding stones of intemperance) and hence are intemperate in 
one extreme or the other, are also equally intemperate, ill-poised and 
unbalanced in matters of religion and politics. Yet these same Russians, 
according to such reports as we have been able to get, refused to submit 
without a struggle when the edict went forth from the emperor, less than 
two years ago, that no more liquor of any kind should be sold, refused 
to admit themselves a nation of minors who cannot even be trusted 
with the care of their own physcial persons. That is to say, the Russians 
made no open organized protest when the prohibitory edict went into 
force and effect, but illegally and privately, their protests were exceed- 
ingly vigorous insomuch as thousands of illicit distilleries sprung up in 
Russia soon after prohibition was imposed upon the country — not 
less than 1,825 of these distilleries were discovered in the first six months, 
so that the total number, including those that were not discovered, can 
only be imagined, and the government was compelled to increase the fine 
for illicit distilling from 2500 rubles to 6000 rubles and imprisonment 
from two months to one year and four months. And still illicit distilling 
and drinking grows apace, and the. attempt to suppress the drinking of 
alcoholic beverages altogether will be just about as successful in Russia 
as the attempt in that country, some hundreds of years ago, to suppress 
smoking bv cutting off men's noses. Since the prohibitory edict went 
into force in Russia, drinks have been made in large quantities from de- 
natured alcohol, wood alcohol, varnish and other poisonous and execrable 
substances, resulting in numerous cases in total blindness and death. 

At the same time no attempt has been made to introduce absolute 
or "bone-dry" prohibition in Russia, as reports made current by propa- 
gandists in this country might make us believe, the sale of beer and 
wine being left untouched by the prohibitory edict, so that the com- 
munities can decide for themselves as to whether or not they will permit 
the sale of these drinks within their jurisdictions, an arrangement which 
resembles our local option laws. 

Noah, the Only Man Worthy to be Saved from the Deluge, the Father of 

Drinking Among the Jews. 

Regarding the Jews, the original standard-bearers of the great 
monotheistic idea and the foundation-builders of the Christian religion, 
in relation to the drink problem, we fina" that the Old Testament contains 
many pertinent references concerning this matter. One of earliest in- 
cidents relative to this subject is found in Genesis. Noah, who with his 
familv was the only survivor from the deluge, becomes drunk in his 
tent by indulging too freely in the fermented fruit of the vine. This 
incident is quite instructive. Ham, one of the three sons of Noah, jeering 
at the temporary weakness of his father and holding himself manifestly 
morairy superior to him, is truly the earliest prototype of the intolerant 
ard narrow-sighted prohibitionist, while the other two sons, Shem and 
Japheth, are more generous and more temperate (morally) and altogether 
truer types of the Jewish character as it afterwards developed itself. 

Throughout the Old Testament we find proofs that the ancient Jews 
were fond of wine and used it habitually. Thus we read in Psalm 103: 
"And that wine may cheer the heart of man;" in Proverbs, 31-6: "Give 
strong drink to him that is ready to perish and wine unto those that be 
heavv of heart." In Chronicle we read also (II, 10) that Solomon gave 
to Hiram's servants who cut the timber for his temple twenty thousand 
measures of wine, t.i., 100,000 gallons. 

17 



The Jews used wine in the celebration of their religious rites and 
festivals by the express command of God. "And for a drink-offering 
thou shalt offer the third part of a hin of wine, for a sweet savour unto 
the Lord" (Numbers, XV :7). "And thou shalt bring for a drink offering 
half a hin of wine, for an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto 
the Lord" (Numbers, XV:10). Moses, in the name of Jehovah, permitted 
the people to spend their tithe money "for wine or for strong drink" 
(Deut. XIV :26). This is all the more remarkable when it is considered 
that the Jewish government was originally a theocracy, a government in 
which God alone was the Supreme Ruler and Lawgiver, not a certain 
"god," but the One and Only God whom the Christians and all true be- 
lievers also recognize and worship. 

Now if the use* of alcoholic beverages was not only permitted, but 
even recommended and commanded for certain purposes under a God- 
Government, this should certainly be conclusive scriptural proof that 
nothing could be further from God's design than to impose total absti- 
nence or prohibition on His "chosen" people or on any other people. The 
theory that this wine was not real, fermented wine is too absurd to deserve 
specific and formal refutation. There are numerous instances in the Old 
as well as in the New Testament referring to intemperance and drunken- 
ness in the use of wine that the mere suggestion that by "yayin" was 
meant grape juice (an entirely modern invention) is only possible to 
wilful ignorance; for to any one who honestly takes the trouble nothing 
will be found more certainly established in this connection than that by 
"yayin" was always meant real, t.i., fermented wine. 

In the light of this fact, namely, that the Jews have, from very early 
times, used wine, it is certainly highly significant that they have remained 
to this day one of the healthiest, soberest and most temperate peoples. 

All Drinking Races Are Strong; All Abstemious Races Are Decadent. 

In concluding this short chapter, the fact deserves especial notice that 
the inhabitants of rigorous climes are greater eaters and more carniv- 
orous, and that they are also greater drinkers than those that live in 
warmer and more temperate climes, for alcohol helps to burn up and 
digest this heavy food. Still more interesting is the universal fact that 
all strong and predominant races are given to strong drink. The ab- 
stemious races are all decadent. History teaches on all sides with remark- 
able emphasis that energy, initiative and enterprise belong in a pre-emi- 
nent degree to the drinking races. We need only compare, for instance, 
the Germans, the English and Americans with the Spaniards, Turks and 
Hindus; but the most striking example is furnished by the two yellow 
races. The Chinese are sober and decadent, the drinking Japanese are 
enterprising, alert, virile and more actively intelligent. Drunken Scotland 
has produced not only the most capable and successful pioneers, but also a 
proportionately larger number of the deepest and most clear-fieaded 
thinkers than the great majority of other races. I do not assert that 
these races are alert, capable and endowed with virile intelligence because 
they drink, but the fact remains that drink and racial energy go together. 
Drink may be merely the inevitable radiation of the surplus of the fire of 
racial energy; but the fact remains that nations that are without this 
exhilarating radiation are also without the energy. 

VI. 
CONCERNING THE NATURE AND GENERAL USE OF ALCOHOL. 

Fermented liquor of one kind or another has been made and drunk 

18 



since time immemorial and practically all nations that have written 
histories have used it more or less — with a few exceptions almost con- 
tinuously — while savages or nations that have not risen above a com- 
paratively primitive culture have also been manufacturers and con- 
sumers of the subtle liquid gained from the best fruits and seeds of 
plants, although, generally, to a much smaller extent than the more 
civilized races. This is surely a significant fact. Not that we mean to 
infer that the consumption of any kind of alcoholic liquor is in itself a 
necessary adjunct of a higher culture, but the use of liquor certainly 
implies sociability and, among other things, that desire for individual 
happiness which always receives man's first and perhaps most last- 
ing attention. That is what the use of wine fundamentally means: the 
enjoyment of things for which God has supplied the material and 
out of Which man has fashioned things and substances for the further- 
ance of his well-being and for the relief of the burdens which life na- 
turally imposes upon him. 

In illustration and support of this fact we find, for instance, that the 
chosen people who were extremely careful, even scrupulous, as to the 
things that it was proper for them to eat and drink — far more careful 
and scrupulous than the American people have as yet dreamt of being — 
held wine, physically and religiously, in the highest regard. 

Only the most primitive savage indeed uses herbs, fruits and the 
flesh of animals nearly as he finds them. The civilized man prepares his 
food and drink laboriously and with thoughtful care; he cooks, seasons, 
cures, brews, them with painstaking conscientiousness. He often sub- 
jects food, before eating it, to changes which in the case of the savage 
are performed by the digestive organs themselves. The savage can 
afford to do this for his vital forces are not called upon to expend 
themselves for higher and subtler activities; he spends an immense 
amount of energy in digestion alone, energy which the civilized man 
largely diverts into channels where they produce results more nearly 
commensurate with his ambition and destiny. Paraphrasing a saying 
of Moliere's: "Man digests to live, he does not live to digest." What- 
ever will facilitate this process of elaborating physical power with- 
out in any way supererogating altogether nature's work or eliminating 
any function that is essential for the health of the individual, by mak- 
ing the harnessed forces of nature perform it for him as much as pos- 
sible, will aid man to live less Wastefully and more effectively. It is in 
accordance with this subtilizing evolution of the process of digestion 
that, for instance, the so-called appendix serves no longer any use in 
man's body, but is actually in the way and a source of danger, while a 
great many people may be found who no longer grow the original number 
of teeth, but only twenty-eight, probably because man does not have to 
depend so much on his teeth in preparing his food, and probably also 
because he needs additional bone material for his larger skull. 

Such animals as our esteemed and highly appreciated cow use an 
immense amount of energy in order to transform grass, hay and other 
coarse substances into blood and muscle. Indeed the cow's digestive 
system is a powerful and wonderful chemical apparatus, so powerful 
that if the energy thus expended by the cow in the course of a few days 
only were reduced to foot-pounds, the energy developed by some of the 
most colossal engines of peace or war might seem insignificant. On the 
other hand, such animals as the lion, tiger, wolf, etc., derive and main- 
tain their physical strength and prowess largely from substances which 
closely resemble their own bodies; their energy is therefore restored and 
replenished so directly and immediately that the original desires and 
powers of the animal are supplied and stimulated so quickly and sud- 

19 



denly that there is no chance for the development of those intricate 
processes and finer elements needed by the higher organism of the think- 
ing animal. The cow uses overmuch energy in assimilating her food, 
she is a manufacturer of beef and milk; the beast of prey takes, as it 
were, the finished product piping hot from the mouth of nature. Neither 
of these processes is congenial to the development of the rational mind, 
for the organism which is to develop the thinking brain can neither 
harbor an immense chemical laboratory for the sole purpose, almost, of 
assimilating food, nor be the receptacle for such naked vital energy. 
Man must assimilate his food with the expenditure of a well propor- 
tioned amount of energy, but the process must be in tune with his 
intellectual activities, taking all things from the hands of nature and 
transforming them, partly by his own devices, into a multiplicity of new 
things, new stimuli, new energies ; in other words, he must become in a 
double sense a re-creator, even in sustaining his physical powers, in 
order to establish and maintain the harmony and balance between the 
activities of the mind and the body. 

(No wonder that the preparation of our foods and drinks is considered such an 
absorbing and vital function; no wonder that we entrust cooking preferentially to our 
good mothers and wives; no wonder that the French, who above all others appreciate 
good wine and realize that not only is "the surest way to the heart of man in a well 
cooked dinner," but that it is also one of the surest ways to the mind of man; no 
wonder that the drink problem is of such transcending importance.) 

Alcohol Saves Vital Energy. 

Ordinary alcohol, technically called ethyl alcohol, in distinction 
from methyl, butyl and other kinds of alcohol, is found in a natural state 
in a number of green fruits and plants, but it is produced in large 
quantities and of purer quality from the seeds and fruits of various 
plants, sometimes also from the roots, by processes of fermentation 
and distillation. It is the intoxicating and stimulating element in wine, 
beer, whiskey, brandy, etc. When drunk with right measure, it promotes 
digestion by performing part of that combustion of the food which other- 
wise would fall wholly on the glands of the digestive apparatus and the 
nervous system, so that judiciously used, it is like a flame supplementing 
in the body that process of digestion which is begun outside of the body 
by cooking and other preparation of the food. Injudiciously used, it will 
injure the vessel in which it performs this supplementary aid to diges- 
tion, just as any vessel will be injured by fire when the water or other 
liquid which it contained is boiled away or when the heat of the fire is 
too intense. 

Indeed, one of the most remarkable physiological effects of alcohol, 
used moderately, is to assimilate, energize and transmute natural force 
more quickly from the material taken in the form of food, especially 
food that contains plenty of albumen. Alcohol accomplishes in a higher, 
more intensified and somewhat modified degree the effects that are 
produced by meat, coffee, tea, etc., and that is true in spite of the 
inhibitory effects also due to alcohol. When used intemperately, . how- 
ever, the body becomes over-energized, and its effect is decidedly 
destructive. 

(This is true notwithstanding that there is between the effect from coffee and tea 
and the effect from alcohol a very deep and subtle difference which it would be. quite 
futile to attempt to define or account for outside of a philosophic treatise, for after all, 
as compared with the comforting, wakeful, aromatic water called coffee (which has been 
declared to act more strongly on some nerves than wine or brandy), and the wonderful 
delicious insipidity from steeped leaves, wine is indeed a spirit, evil to those whose 
hearts are weak or evil, but, when of the right age and temper, more delightful than 
the finest tea to those who have conquered the baser movements of the flesh.) 

20 



Alcohol produces Partial Sleep and is Next to Natural Sleep One of the 

Greatest Restoratives. 

It must be admitted, however, that to a great extent the effect of 
alcohol on the human body is still clouded in mystery, scientifically 
speaking, even in the face of the highly developed chemical, physiological 
and biological sciences. On the whole, it seems to inhibit or temporarily 
paralyze many of those functions of the body which ordinarily are in 
action, while rousing and stimulating a great many functions which 
ordinarily are neglected or in a state of dormancy. In this way a 
restoration is effected which is highly beneficial when pure, well matured 
beverages of low proof are used temperately, although the excessive use 
especially of raw distilled liquor will have in most cases an injurious 
effect as it tends to weaken and paralyze certain organs, and, when per- 
sisted in, to produce a condition of premature old age. This explains 
according to the late Prof. William James, the American philosopher, 
why men of certain professions, printers for instance, whose occupation 
is very monotonous and "unnatural," show strong tendencies to inebriety, 
the effect of a "spree" being like the shaking given an old carpet, or as 
Prof. James has it, like bringing out the second wind, t. i., all those 
dormant forces which ordinarily find no opportunity for display, while 
forcibly putting to rest those forces which ordinarily are overworked. 

The late Hugo Miinsterberg, who was beyond question one of 
the greatest psychologists of his time, says in his "American Problems:" 

"The inhibiton by alcohol, too, may have in the right place its very desirable pur- 
pose, and no one ought to be terrified by such physiological statements, even if inhibition 
is called a partial paralysis. Yes, it is partial paralysis, but no education, no art, no 
politics, no religion is possible without such partial paralysis. What else are hope and 
belief and enjoyment and enthusiasm but re-enforcement of certain mental states, with 
corresponding inhibition — that is paralysis — of the opposite ideas ? If a moderate use of 
alcohol can help in this most useful blockade, it is an ally and not an enemy. If wine 
can overcome and suppress the consciousness of the little miseries and of the drudgery of 
life, and thus set free and re-enforce the unchecked enthusiasm for the dominant idea, 
if wine can make one forget the frictions and pains and give again the feeling of unity 
and frictionless power — bv all means let us use this helper to civilization. It was a 
well-known philosopher who couples Christianity and alcohol as the two great means of 
mankind to set us free from pain. But nature provided mankind with other means of 
inhibition; sleep is still more radical, and every fatigue works in the same direction; 
to inhibit means to help and to prepare for action." Further on he says: "We know 
today too well that physical exercise and sport is not real rest for the exhausted brain 
cells. The American masses work hard throughout the day. The sharp physical and 
mental labor, the constant hurry and drudgery produces a state of tension and irritation 
which demands before the night's sleep some dulling inhibition if a dangerous unrest is 
not to set in. Alcohol relieves that daily tenson most directly." 

Alcohol, accordingly, produces a condition in which part of the brain 
or part of the organism may rest or sleep, while other parts remain 
awake, thus enabling men to enjoy life while refreshing themselves by 
a rest which cannot be obtained in any other way. This fact explains 
more than anything else why the world's leading nations have used 
alcohol for hundreds, aye, for thousands of years. 

Externally, alcohol is highly antiseptic. It is one of the greatest 
foes of putrefaction and of great benefit in skin troubles. Indeed its 
use in hospitals and operating rooms has become more pronounced than 
ever, many surgeons seeming to prefer it to other antiseptics for many 
purposes. The chemist tells us that alcohol is a releaser of fat, since 
it oxidizes to a certain extent in the body. It is to this quality that the 
fattening effect of alcoholic beverages is attributed, an effect which, 
when employed with moderation, is also of great value in building up the 
human system. 

21 



Quasi-Religious Intoxication Resembles the Alcoholic. 

Many of the semi-civilized races are frequently as readily intoxi- 
cated by a quasi-religious frenzy as by liquor. Apparently, they are no 
more fully capable of moral and spiritual stimulation than of physiologi- 
cal stimulation, their reaction being in either case too violently mechan- 
ical. For religious frenzy does not as a rule imply true religious 
recognition, it is rather the other extreme of irreligiosity, although it 
is sometimes a genuine attempt to attain that true ethical-spiritual state 
which is nothing but love of God and man, t. i., righteous living. . That 
intoxication by means of distorted and perverted religious beliefs and 
suggestions is by no means uncommon among the white races of the 
present day is abundantly proved in our own country. Also in Russia — 
that country which in so many manifestations of abnormality and excess, 
strangely enough, so strongly resembles our own. Thus Maxim Gorky, 
the famous Russian author, who is certainly well acquainted with the 
common people of his own country, makes one of his characters kneel 
before a statue of the Virgin Mary, just before setting out to murder 
a Jewish merchant for his money, and pray to her after this fashion: 
"0, Mother of God, let me be successful this once in my enterprise (of 
murdering the Jew) and I will always worship Thee thereafter and 
commit nothing any more that is displeasing to Thee." He thereupon 
drinks heavily, and armed with this double intoxication, he starts out on 
his bloody journey. But it is just as little the vodka as his "religion" 
which compels him to the heinous deed, he merely uses both as levers 
to enable him to act as he wants to act; they are merely two factors 
which play the part of subsidiary forces by means of which he rouses 
himself to the carrying out of the evil thought which he has long 
nursed in is heart. The devil is in him, identified with his fundamental 
moral self, not in his religion nor in the vodka, and this devil will 
not allow him to assimilate either his religious creed or his vodka to 
normal and natural ends, but employs them both as instruments for his 
murderous design. 

VII. 

THE SUPPOSED SCIENTIFIC DEATH RATES OF NON- ABSTAINERS 
AS COMPARED WITH THAT OF ABSTAINERS. 

From the acts of the professional prohibitionists it is evident that 
they are working with all their might and main, whether consciously or 
not, to make self-deceit and hypocrisy a national vice. They think they 
understand the causes and conditions that are responsible for intemper- 
ance, but when you learn that they are not even able to honestly read 
the Bible which they constantly carry in their hands, how much reliance, 
do you suppose, can be put into their assertions which are presumably 
based upon knowledge derived from an insight which is infinitely 
more difficult to obtain than to study the simple words of the New 
Testament? As a matter of fact, they see only that in the New 
Testament which suits their own purposes, they can see only as much 
of the light as their own prejudice has not extinguished. If they thus 
pervert the plain meaning of the words and acts of "their Master," 
what will you expect of them, when it is a question of getting statistics 
from nature and the world? Will they not allow perversion of facts 
and misrepresentation of conditions to run riot if only they can make out 
a case? Will they not make the fullest use of all the subtle ways in 
which figures can be made to lie? (Remember that Andrew Carnegie 
said that "figures can be made to lie in as many ways as there are lives 

22 



in a cat," and that although figures themselves do not lie, the most 
effective and deceiving lying can be done by means of figures.) Right 
here it is where their self-deceit takes firm root, after which it spreads 
rapidly and soon overshadows their whole mind. Many striking instances 
can be cited in support of this fact. Thus while the prohibitionists have 
always zealously advocated self-government for any state or district of 
such a state, when they were engaged in fighting local option campaigns, 
they hesitated not a moment to utterly disregard this principle, when it 
was a question to force prohibition on the people of the District of 
Columbia without giving the people of the District even a chance to 
express their opinion of the imposition of such a law on them, much less 
to give them a chance to decide the issue for themselves. But can you 
expect that they will treat their fellowmen with more honesty and 
consistency than they have treated the Founder of the Christian religion ? 

Figures on the Alleged Death Rates of the Users and Non-Users of 

Alcohol Misleading. 

A great deal has been made by the prohibitionists of the mortality 
supposed to be shown by those who imbibe even moderately in alcoholic 
beverages, and frequently figures are submitted to support this allega- 
tion. Let us look a little closer at these claims. 

We will dismiss the mortality of those who use liquor excessively, 
since, for one thing, there are no figures whatever available showing that 
mortality on a large scale, while, on the other hand, the excessive use of 
tobacco, coffee, etc., as well as overeating, will probably show as great a 
mortality as the intemperate use of liquor. It is certainly established 
that abstinence from tobacco shows a more favorable mortality than ab- 
stinence from alcoholic beverages; the former being 47, while the latter 
is 49. We will, therefore, examine the record of those who are supposed 
to be moderate drinkers, since the prohibitionists claim that the mor- 
tality among those who drink moderately or only occasionally is much 
greater than among total abstainers. Now the only scientifically pre- 
pared data pertaining to this mortality have been gathered by certain life 
insurance companies, and it is the experience of these companies which 
the prohibitionists refer to as far as they make any pretense of giving 
scientific corroboration to their statements. But, although such data 
have been obtained by some of the insurance companies with a great 
deal of care, yet their scientific value is summed up by Edward Bunnell 
Phelps, editor of the American Underwriter, who certainly is in a position 
to speak authoritatively and impartially, in these words: 

"The more I have collected and read and thcught on the subject, the more have I 
been impressed with the widespread circulation of misleading figures and conclusions as 
to the alleged death rates of users and non-users of alcohol which in my judgment seem 
to be unwarranted." 

Submit the Drink Problem to School Children for Solution. 

Nothing illustrates more forcibly the incompetency of the prohi- 
bitionists than, for instance, the proposition which the "Anti-Saloon 
League of Maryland" submitted to 30,000 school children of Baltimore, 
in offering them prizes aggregating $3,000, for essays on the subject: 
"The Effect of Alcoholic Drinks Upon the Human Mind and Body." 
Imagine such a problem being submitted to school children for solution; 
a problem which has hitherto baffled the profoundest and most capable 
scientific thinkers! The material on which the children were to draw in 
preparing these prize essays was a 32-page pamphlet published by the 
Scientific Temperance Federation of Boston, which bears the same title: 



'■The Effect of Alcoholic Drinks Upon the Human Mind and Body." The 
principal data used in this pamphlet are taken from a book entitled 'The 
Mortality of Alcohol/' a book which was written by that very Edward 
Bunnell Phelps, who, as above quoted, considers the "widespread circula- 
tion of figures as to alleged death-rates of users and non-users of alcohol" 
wholly misleading and unwarranted. At the very outset in this pam- 
phlet the startling assertion of "one death every eight minutes due to 
drink/' is made to rest upon figures presented in Mr. Phelps' book, and 
the statement is further made that "alcohol carries off 1,662 adults 
every nine days all the year around in the U. S., 65,897 a year, accord- 
ing to the estimate of Edward Bunnell Phelps, based on estimates of the 
medical directors of three of the large life insurance companies." 

Dr. Phelps Charges That Prohibitionists Misused His Own Figures. 

Regarding this statement, alleged to be supported by his own book, 
Doctor Phelps says in a subsequent publication: 

"I trust I may not seem to put myself in an ungracious position if I flatly deny 
my responsibility for this statement charged to me. I herewith cite from my book 
literal proof that I made no such estimate. (Quoting) 'In default of proof positive to 
the contrary it would therefore be entirely safe to assume that the total annual mor- 
tality of continental United States in which alcohol directly, indirectly or even remotely 
figures as a causative or contributory factor at last reports did not exceed the 66,000 
deaths approximately suggested by this investigation. It should be clearly understood 
that this figure by no means signifies that alcohol vras the direct cause of 66,000 
deaths, the number in question presumably including all of the deaths in which alcohol 
played an appreciable contributory part. Consequently the number of deaths thus com- 
puted is not properly comparable with the number of deaths accredited to any partic- 
ular cause in the Annual Mortality Statistics of the Registration Area, as in every 
case those figures deal with deaths immediately due to the cause named.' " 

It is easy to see that what Doctor Phelps means is that in the case 
of any death there may be two or three or ten contributory causes, 
and it is more than exaggeration, it is absolute falsification to state posi- 
tively that one of the contributory causes mentioned is the one which 
"carries off" the diseased person. 

The Longevity of Clergymen No f t Due to Abstinence Alone. 

If, in the computation of the mortality of drinkers alcohol is made 
to bear the burden of all other contributory causes, the very same fal- 
lacious method is pursued, negatively, by the prohibitionists in account- 
ing for the longevity of abstainers. Thus it is asserted, for instance, 
that the average clergyman has a lower mortality than the average 
man in most other callings and professions, because he generally ab- 
stains from the use of liquor! No allowance whatever is made for the 
very large number of other contributory causes which unquestionably 
tend to lengthen the clergyman's life. 

Clergymen have indeed generally shown a lower mortality than the 
men in other callings; their mortality being found to be lower than that 
of the farmers who certainly lead a life which is conducive to longevity. 
But will it be scientific, or even ethically fair, to compare the mortality of 
the abstaining clergyman with the non-abstaining printer, factory worker, 
miner or bartender, and then conclude that the difference in mortality 
in favor of the clergyman is wholly due to the fact that he was an ab- 
stainer, while the men in the other callings were drinkers, whether tem- 
perate or intemperate? Does any rational person for a moment suppose 
that the printer, miner, factory worker or barkeeper would live anywhere 
nearly as long as the clergyman even though they were total abstainers, 
not only from alcohol but also from tobacco, coffee or any other stimu- 

24 



lant ? Is it not more than obvious that the smoky, unhealthy atmosphere 
in barrooms, the unnatural, monotonous occupation of the printer and 
miner, the irregularity of living attendant to many occupations in large 
cities, lower the mortality of the men thus occupied until it becomes as 
low as that of the physician? The printer, miner, factory- worker and 
bartender cannot regulate their lives as nicely and beautifully as the 
clergyman does who lives in a spiritual atmosphere and is outwardly 
surrounded by pleasant and congenial influences, so that he is able to 
make it his business to take care of himself. Moreover, is it not true 
that the non-abstaining clergyman in England, France and Germany lives 
just as long as his abstaining American brother? Not that we criticize 
or envy the clergyman for thriving upon the pleasant and beneficent 
"simple life," which is his share, on the contrary, we are very glad to 
see him live so long and so pleasantly in spite of his too meagre salary, 
but is it right for him to cast odium on the callings of other men by 
asserting or implying that their lower mortality and other disadvantages 
are due to intemperance? No doubt the printer, miner, factory-worker 
and bartender would like very much to live under the pleasant condi- 
tions which are so conducive to longevity, but since as a result of the 
nature of their work they must sink down into premature graves, should 
they not also be rather honored for laying down their lives on the altar 
of civilization just as the clergyman does? Yes, it is even possible for 
the "drain-man" who has never been inside of a church building to be 
more godly than the vicar or the bishop. 

Method of Obtaining Death Rates of Moderate Drinkers Is Unscientific. 

(Concerning the scientific value of the figures obtained on the mor- 
tality of non-abstainers, we may add that this value is even consider- 
ably less than it seems to be when the figures are correctly read and 
truthfully interpreted and purified of the exaggeration and misapplica- 
tion which they received at the hands of those who favor prohibition 
rather than temperance. The figures being computed from the mor- 
tality experience of a number of life insurance companies, it is pertinent 
to ask how these companies obtained the data underlying them. These 
data are practically in all cases based on the statements given by the ap- 
plicants for insurance, at the time the insurance is taken out, in answer 
to the question whether or not and to what extent they were abstainers 
from alcoholic liquors. The natural tendency of the applicants is, for 
obvious reasons, to understate rather than overstate the amount of 
liquor they consume. One applicant will say that he drinks "a glass once 
in a while," when he may be drinking a glass nearly every day. Another 
will say that he takes a little occasionally, when this occasional indul- 
gence may be measured in terms of very generous quantities. As the 
company makes no inquiries concerning the applicant's past indulgence, 
excepting in the very few cases when very large amounts of insurance 
are applied for, and makes no investigation with regard to the conduct of 
the applicant after the policy has been issued, it becomes obvious that 
these data rest on very slender evidence, so that the manner in which 
the original data were obtained does by no means deserve to be called 
scientific. As a result of this wholly inadequate and manifestly unscien- 
tific method a great many regular drinkers will be classed as occasional 
drinkers, and many that are really intermittently intemperate will be 
classed as moderate drinkers, so that the mortality ascribed to the mod- 
erate drinker is really a compound of the mortality of the moderate and 
the intemperate drinker, and the moderate drinker is charged with a far 
higher than his actual mortality. 

25 



Thus it is easy to understand why the editor of the American Un- 
derwriter should reject even the correct figures obtained by life insur- 
ance companies on the mortality of abstainers and non-abstainers as 
practically worthless as approximates of the actual death rates, while 
the distortions and exaggerations v of these already unreliable figures by 
the prohibitionists renders them worse than useless for any scientific 
purpose, although highly useful for the purpose of misrepresentation and 
falsification. 

The fallaciousness and unscrupulousness shown by the prohibition- 
ists in pointing out the alleged mortality of the users of alcohol is not 
less apparent in their other demonstrations on the injurious physiolog- 
ical effect of alcohol when moderately used. Cirrhosis of the liver, con- 
sumption, pneumonia, hardening of the arteries especially are all readily 
"proved" by them as being caused in by far the majority of cases by 
the intemperate as well as by the temperate use of alcohol. A close, 
honest and impartial examination of facts and findings by physiologists, 
however, easily disposes of these allegations as far as the temperate use 
of alcohol is concerned, while even with regard to the intemperate use 
physiologists are by no means in agreement. Those superficial -medical 
writers indeed "who always cater to what they believe to be the prevail- 
ing sentiment (because it pays best) , frequently parade all kinds of 
"proofs" through the columns of the press that alcohol is always and 
even in the smallest doses injurious; if public sentiment were blowing in 
the other direction, they would probably find with equal facility that 
alcohol is never harmful. 

The fundamental facts involved in these allegations are, first: that 
alcohol, when excessively used, is a contributory cause in producing the 
morbid conditions mentioned, and, second, that excess of any kind is 
especially injurious to people who are susceptible to such diseases as con- 
sumption, pneumonia, hardened arteries, etc. A consumptive in the ad- 
vanced stages, for instance, may be injured even by subjecting himself 
to the strong winds of the seashore or the mountain, although he is 
above all things in need of pure air. What air is purer and fresher than 
the air on the mountain, especially when in a state of rapid motion? 
And yet it may become an over-stimulation to which he can no longer 
respond. It is due to this fact that so many consumptives collapse when 
they come to the mountains in search of health — the mountain air forc- 
ing upon them an "intemperance*' in oxidation and metabolism under 
which they quickly succumb, although if they had repaired to the moun- 
tain earlier, they would unquestionably have been benefited. 

It would be highly interesting to examine analytically and in the 
light of the most competent physiological research the claims of the pro- 
hibitionists that the use of alcohol in any quantity is one of the chief 
causes, if not the cause, producing those dreaded diseases, but lack of 
space makes it entirely impossible to do so in this little volume. We have 
only found room to submit an analysis of the method used by prohi- 
bitionists in obtaining the supposed death rates of users and non-users 
of alcohol, thus giving a fair example of the methods used by them in 
attempting to substantiate their other claims of this character. We may, 
however, point out that their "physiologists" who have conducted ex- 
periments to determine the effect of small quantities of alcohol have 
often proceeded in such a manner as to produce the demonstration de- 
sired. Thus men were used in these experiments who are ordinarily ab- 
stainers and wholly unused to alcohol, as little children might be, and 
the effect on them was proclaimed as the normal action of alcohol on 
drinkers generally! Again, in these experiments strong distilled liquor 
was used on empty stomachs, etc. Much of the evidence used for these 

26 



demonstrations by prohibitionists is furnished by criminals who eagerly 
confess to drinking-, and this kind of practically worthless evidence is 
then used just as eagerly and without further investigation by these pro- 
fessional manufacturers of unreasoned sentiment. 

As to the terrifying insinuations of the prohibitionists that a nation 
could be wholly wiped out by alcoholism through the process of heredi- 
tary predisposition, We need only say that age-long experience of some 
of the older nations effectually disposes of this bogey, otherwise every 
one of us would be a hopeless drunkard, for there cannot be any doubt 
that every one of us has had some drunken ancestors. 

VIII. 

MORAL FREEDOM THE FOUNDATION OF TRUE TEMPERANCE. 

That certain savage or semi-civilized races and weak individuals of 
other races do not seem to be able to use even wine and other moderately 
alcoholic beverages without excess is certainly no more an argument in 
itself that wine, beer and other liquor, when properly made, aged and 
moderately used, are injurious to those races that have used them with 
apparently good results through hundreds of generations, than it is an 
argument against popular government because, for instance, the French, 
in their first delirious outbursts over a suddenly acquired popular au- 
tonomy and freedom, ruthlessly and ferociously slaughter thousands upon 
thousands of their fellowmen just because they happened to be aristo- 
crats ; it is no more a valid argument than the contention that the negro 
is comparatively incapable of self-government is an ultimately valid ar- 
gument against the emancipation of the Black Man. 

U. S. Judge Pollock Declares Prohibition is a Form of Slavery. 

Notwithstanding all that may be averred by those that like to dwell 
in the blindness of their own prejudices and passions, as well as by 
those, who, with good intention, believe that others should be guided by 
such light as they choose to give them, and notwithstanding the fact 
that every law is naturally a limitation of privilege and every light a 
cause of shadows, it still remains one of the greatest maxims of life that 
there never can be too much light or too much freedom. Not the light 
that blinds nor the freedom to do evil; for shielding the eyes against 
rays that are destructive rather than illuminating does not mean shun- 
ning the light, and limitation of privilege does not necessarily and fun- 
damentally imply restriction of freedom. As Judge John Pollock, from 
the U. S. District Court, expressed it in October, 1915: 

"It is sometimes thought one cf the most difficult matters to understand why peo- 
ple of the Anglo Saxon race deliberately enslave themselves to the state and to the gov- 
ernment. Because a few of the many have not the manhocd and strength of charac- 
ter to resist the baneful effect of narcotics or intoxicants, people voluntarily put them- 
selves in slavery to protect somebody, who is not worthy of being protected, from their 
use; will sacrifice those who are self-respecting to protect or bolster up some worthless 
scoundrels who are no earthly use to themselves cr their government. Why people will 
do that, why this country is doing that, I do not know. But they are doing it and do- 
ing to such an extent that the people of this country will rebel in the near future. 

"No people have ever before had so many masters and sovereigns dealing with them 
as the people of the United States. All of them are apparently striving to see how 
many chains they can throw around the individual citizen for the supposed good of 
those who have not self-respect enough to to take care of themselves. Some day the 
people of this country will grow tired of this; when they do, they will stop it. Then the 
liberty of the individual citizen will again become as sacred as is now the props by law 
imposed to support the moral fiber of the degenerate and weak, who are utterly use- 
less." 

27 



Judge Pollock certainly knew what he was talking about. He 
does not deal with the subject theoretically from the garret of self- 
sacrificed purity and virtue. His knowledge is born of long and 
intimate experience, minute observation and careful analysis. 

Now what is the keynote of Judge Pollock's vigorous denunciation 
of the "Anglo-Saxon" tendency to surround and hedge in a great 
many, if not all, people with certain absolute restrictions just because 
a few of them are incapable to resist the temptation that the absence 
of these restrictions will expose them to? The keynote is that such 
a tendency will produce hyprocrisy by making not the character, but 
purely external conditions the foundation of righteous conduct, so that 
people will be morally apparently good, not because they choose to be 
good, or because they base their own conduct on knowledge gained by 
experience in relation to their fellow men, but because they have every 
external motive to do evil taken away from them, and are thus de- 
prived of true moral responsibility and reduced to the status of moral 
minors. This is assuming that virtue and vice are primarily in the 
"pot" rather than in the character of the man that eats and drinks 
from that pot, thus tending to make righteous conduct purely the 
mechanical result of an external machinery created by law. 

Christ said (Mark VII, 18-22): "Whatever thing from without 
entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it entereth not 
into his heart but into the belly. That which cometh out of the man 
that defileth the man. For from . within out of the heart of man 
proceed evil thoughts, adulterations, fornications, murder, thefts, covet- 
ousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, 
pride, foolishness, all these things come from Within and defile the 
man." 

IX. 

VARIOUS KINDS OF INTEMPERANCE, OR THE MANIFOLD ROOT 

OF INTEMPERANCE. 

We have seen in Chapter I that temperance, in its widest sense 
and application, is the law of Right Measure in all human actions, 
indulgences and relations, the self-imposed principle of limitation which 
also involves the recognition of the limitations within which human 
actions, indulgences and relations may exercise themselves in such a 
way as to insure the greatest benefits to the individual as well as to 
"the community. It is easy to see how manifold this principle may be 
and how difficult it is to- understand it comprehensively and apply it 
correctly. It is also easy to see that the violation of this great prin- 
ciple in one of its vital forms will invariably result in its vio- 
lation in other forms, so that one kind of intemperance, if not ration- 
ally and scientifically or at least sensibly dealt with (for common sense 
must serve us in every problem until we are able to deal with it 
scientifically) will often beget other and more obnoxious kinds of in- 
temperance. 

It is in recognition of this fact that the French statesman, M. 
Guyot, says, anent the attempt by prohibitionists at the outbreak of 
the war in France, to absolutely suppress the sale of wine, beer and 
ardent spirits: "Les temperants, atteints d'un 'delirium' pire que le 
'delirium tremens,' pietinent, dechirent et saccagent les principes ele- 
mentaires de la liberte individuelle et du respect de la propriete! Leur 
intoxication intellectuelle et morale est autrement dangereuse que toutes 
les intoxications alcooliques." 

(The prohibitionists, carried away by a delirium which is worse than the delirium 
tremens, tear to pieces and grind under their heels the elementary principles of the 

28 



liberty of the individual and the respect of the law of decency. Their mental and 
moral drunkenness is at least as dangerous as any alcoholic drunkenness.) 

These are the words of a man of discernment who certainly has 
only the welfare of his country at heart and who is unquestionably a 
strong advocate of true temperance. The common drunkard, indeed, 
is but a helpless by-product of imperfect social or natural conditions, 
the froth on the surface of deeper and more serious forms of intem- 
erance, but the mental and moral "intemperant" is a serpent against 
which We must employ all possible vigilance, lest he make his home 
in our bosom and poison us unto the death from which there may not 
be a resurrection, even while we are boasting of legalistic goodness 
and purity. 

Mental and moral intemperance, as well as its counterpart, mental 
and moral temperance, are found in numerous forms in individuals, 
communities and nations. There is what we shall call for want of a 
better term the economic intemperance, popularly called greed; the 
intemperance of domination, commonly called tyranny, autocracy gone 
wild or the lust to dominate ; social intemperance, commonly recognized 
as ostentatious vanity or the desire to shine in contrast with your 
neighbor; the intemperance of the spirit, or spiritual pride; also the 
more purely emotional intemperance on whose wings people are carried 
away by natural as well as by purposely manufactured waves of senti- 
ment which obscure the judgment and generate all kinds of excess; 
finally, the strictly physical forms of intemperance, such as intem- 
perance from drinking, etc; really one of the least serious of all 
kinds of intemperance, although singled out by our propagandists as 
the most dangerous, if not as the only form of intemperance that 
deserves consideration, thus leaving no doubt that according to their 
conceptions virtue and temperance are primarily, if not wholly, of 
purely physical and external rather than of moral origin. 

Economic intemperance, or greed, or the lust of material gain, 
compels, among other things, thousands and thousands of laboring 
people to overwork themselves in order to make a living, t. i., to 
exert themselves intemperately, thus falling often victims to premature 
decay and forcing them to "make themselves air" in the stifling 
atmosphere of poverty by means of other kinds of intemperance, espe- 
cially drinking, gambling, etc. The U. S. census reports show that 
75 per cent of the working population in our industrial centers get less 
than $15.00 per week, while more than 50 per cent get $12.00 or less 
per week. Can you imagine how a man can maintain and educate a 
family on $12.00 a week? The intemperance in drinking of people 
living under such conditions is therefore, at least to a very great 
extent, the direct result of economic intemperance of those who exploit 
them without adequate compensation. To what- excess this greed 
and lust for gain may rise is illustrated by nothing more forcibly 
than by the universal headlong tendency after the outbreak of the 
war to raise prices on all commodities on the part of manufacturers, 
producers and those who control land properties. Think of it, in view 
of the frightful carnage that has been going on in Europe, we greatly 
intensified our passion to make money, coin money, and more money, 
out of the needs of our fellow men! 

The intemperance of domination links itself directly to the un- 
bridled lust for gain, since possession of great material Wealth always 
means power. This sort of intemperance becomes especially dangerous 
when it seizes an individual who is placed by birth or circumstance 
in a position of exceptional power. If an autocratic regime had not 

29 



become intoxicated with the lust of domination, Belgium might not 
have been invaded and the great world war would not have assumed 
such frightful dimensions. 

Social intemperance is perhaps responsible for as much misery, 
financial failure and continued poverty than perhaps any other cause. 
It is the desire of "Keeping up with Lizzy." If Lizzy has four silk 
dresses, Miss Yourself wants five or more, whether she can spare the 
money or not; if Lizzy has a fine limousine, Mr. and Mrs. Yourself 
must also have one, even though they should mortgage their future 
income for months or years, and sensible people will laugh at them 
behind their backs. And so the frightful intemperance in dress and 
appearance, fed assiduously by an ogre called style, "makes countless 
thousands mourn" with misery, ennui and want. 

Sexual intemperance has since time immemorial been considered 
as one of the most destructive forms of intemperance, and although 
the monogamous marriage has more than anything else subdued it, 
it has by no means done away with it, a fact which has been brought 
home to us by such writers as Tolstoy and Bernard Shaw. 

Intemperance of the spirit or spiritual pride is the most obnoxious 
and hateful of all forms of intemperance because it will penetrate a man 
through and through and corrupt his heart to the bottom without his 
becoming aware of it, and because it finds its way into the best 
guarded and most sanctified hearts and places, often making the house 
of God the favorite abode of the devil. 

Emotional intemperance is one of the most universal manifesta- 
tions of intemperance. It has often been the immediate cause of the 
most horrible upheavals. The horrors of the Bartholomew night, when 
the French without warning in one single night killed 50,000 of their 
own innocent men, women and children, the indescribable excesses of 
the French revolution (not the revolution itself), the burning of the 
witches, the slaughtering of Jews and Christians, in our time and 
country, the legalized mobbing of a Leo Frank, and, in part at least, 
this most hideous of all wars, are some of the bitter fruits of emo- 
tional intemperance. The great war, indeed, has probably been pro- 
duced by all the principal roots of intemperance — the lust of gain 
(commercial intemperance), the intemperance of domination, spiritual 
intemperance (intensified national pride), etc. 

If intemperance has such a deep and manifold ramification in our 
society, can we hope to abolish it by absolutely cutting out the whole 
root, t. L, by applying the principle of absolute prohibition? If the 
lust of money corrupts the heart, shall we forbid the pursuit of great 
wealth altogether? If the intemperate love of domination leads here 
and there to disaster and oppression, shall we no longer entrust any 
man or any body of men with public power? If the competition of 
our men and women in dressing and living up to an overreaching stand- 
ard of ostentatious conspicuity causes envy, misery and want on all 
sides, shall we therefore legislate all women into a definite and uniform 
form of dress, and into a uniform form of living? (What a revolution 
we would have on our hands!) If sexual intemperance will even invade 
the marital relation, where in a deeper sense it may often do more 
iniury than outside of that holy relationship, shall we therefore forth- 
with proceed to legislate all sanctity out of marriage in order to sup- 
press such intemperance? If spiritual pride will infect our noblest 
institutions, the churches, shall we therefore put all churches under 
the domination of the government? And shall we forbid revivals, 
patriotic demonstrations and public meetings of all kinds, because they 
sometimes lead to excesses? And shall we in the same spirit, besides 

30 



forbidding the use of alcohol, also forbid smoking, drinking coffee, etc., 
indulgences which normally make the heart glad, because the abuse of 
these things is injurious? Shall we suppress the freedom of speech 
and the press, because tongues and pens are sometimes tipped with 



poison ? 



Every Man Should Find His Own Measure. 



Every man should be able to find his own measure, but he can 
only find it by feeling around for his limitations. If a man cannot 
train himself to drink and indulge otherwise than to excess, abstinence 
is the only course open to him, and by all means let him abstain. 
It is his sacred duty. It is the only way for him to observe the law 
of temperance with regard to drinking, and to him applies the Scrip- 
tural injunction: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out," and 
"if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." But what shall we say 
of the man who will insist that all other people shall also be made 
to cut off their arms and pluck out their eyes, because his weakness 
made it necessary to perform these operations on him? Does it not 
appear that because he had to take a drastic measure to make himself 
physically temperate, the inherent intemperance in him has only been 
driven from his body into his mind, whence it now issues under a 
halo of transfiguration in order to deprive others forcibly of that 
which he himself can neither use nor enjoy? 

The professional prohibitionists have demeaned themselves like 
those superwise old maids, male and female, married and unmarried, 
who invariably know so much better how to raise other people's children 
than the parents themselves, and who are not aware that God and 
nature know best to whom to give children and from whom to with- 
hold them, all appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, and that 
their own will is often itself the effect of that wisdom of nature which 
denies them children. (Let me not be misunderstood — I do not refer 
to all, nor to most, of. those who are childless, for many of these have 
performed the very greatest service for humanity, but only to those 
among them who alone know how to properly bring up other people's 
children.) 

Education and training, aided by reasonable legislation based upon 
experience and scientific deductions, we believe, will accomplish wonders 
in promoting and establishing true temperance, but we are certainly 
abundantly corroborated by experience that indiscriminate or absolute 
prohibition will not accomplish that end. Violent and unnatural sup- 
pression of long-established natural desires will nearly always produce, 
in individuals and communities, reactions and resurgences. So it is 
often found, for instance, that the natural desires and passions ruth- 
lessly suppressed by one generation will reappear with intensified vigor 
in the children, bursting all bonds and causing intemperance to hold 
Bachanalian sway, the mental and repressive intemperance of one gen- 
eration simply becoming "flesh" or physical intemperance in the next. 
The responsibility for such a state must be put on the shoulders of the 
first generation. 

The great Tolstoy believed that family happiness can only be 
attained when that most powerful species of (sexual) emotional intem- 
perance which is known as blind "passion" (generally miscalled love) 
has been overcome and true love, which is always temperate, can come 
into her own. But if he found selfish passion to be the greatest enemy 
of family happiness, it never occurred to him to suggest that somebody 
should straightway legislate about it, for he knew that although pas- 

31 



sion is the greatest enemy of happiness, it is nevertheless only through 
the instrumentality of this great enemy that love and happiness can 
be found. 

Gluttony More Dangerous Than Drunkenness. 

There is a species of intemperance which we must not wholly over- 
look in this discussion, because it is far more universal than alcoholic 
intemperance, namely gluttony or intemperance in eating. Now it 
happens that moderate drinkers are generally also moderate eaters, 
ceteris paribus, while those who abstain from drinking liquor of any 
kind are more often intemperate eaters. The effects of gluttony, if it 
were possible to ascertain them with any degree of accuracy, would 
surely be found, in the final analysis, much more far-reaching and de- 
structive upon the health and the life of the community than intem- 
perance from drinking. To one drunkard there would be found prob- 
ably one hundred gluttons. And while intemperance from drinking 
shows its evil effects promptly and in the open, so that it can be 
readily discerned and, if possible, dealt with, intemperance from eating 
may be carried around like a secret enemy or hidden venom which 
does its work in a multiplicity of unseen ways, producing all sorts of 
diseases, besides some of the most abhorred species of chronic emotional 
intemperance, like the "grouch," the nagger, etc. 

Classic writers like Tacitus, Juvenal, Petronius and others 
attest to the fact that gluttony was a far greater and more blighting 
vice than drunkenness among the Romans of their times. The famous 
Italian philosopher Luigi Carnero, who devoted a great part of his long 
life to thinking about the best way to live long and well, condemns 
gluttony as one of the greatest enemies of health and longevity, While 
his life long he included wine in his carefully selected and frugal diet. 



Moral Self-Control Corresponds to Physical Resistance. 

Since temperance means above all other things self-control or self- 
restraint toward the limits indicated as "rig-lit measure" which, of 
course, differ with different individuals, places and times, it follows 
that when reduced to a crude natural or moral force it means proper ' 
resistance to the positive impulse, desire or moving- power. The 
greater is the resistance provided the power is adequate, the 
greater and more perfect will be the effect desired. It is a universal 
law of nature that unless you have something- to act upon which resists, 
you cannot act at all; not even the force of gravitation could attract 
any body unless every body resisted. Although you may throw a 
small piece of wood with all the power of your arm, you will not 
throw it very far nor strike anything with very great force; the power 
will be dissipated and you will have a feeling of "going to pieces." 
But if you throw a stone or piece of lead, whose weight is adapted to 
the power of your arm, you will throw much further and strike 
the target with very much greater force. When the weight and size 
of the stone is exactly adapted to the full power of your arm, the 
greatest effect will be produced, for that will be the relation of "right 
measure" between the stone and the full power of your arm for the 
purpose intended. In the moral realm the right amount of resistance 
is called self-control— the essential factor in temperance. Self-control, 
however, must not be confounded with self-repression, which results m 
nothingness and death. 

32 



Mr. Bryan, Stone and La Follette. 

What is true with regard to the power of action as dependent 
on the right amount as well as the right kind of resistance in nature 
and in the moral realm, is not less true of social organizations, of 
governments and of nations. From the outbreak of the war in Europe, 
certain Americans, re-enforced by a considerable following of citizens of 
German and non-German descent, were active to maintain America in a 
condition of neutrality and peace. Pre-eminent among these men were 
Mr. Bryan and Senators Stone and La Follette. The resisting and 
"holding back" power exercised and led by these men not only steadied 
and clarified America's judgment, but actually helped to strengthen and 
solidify the sentiment of the majority for war on the side of the 
Entente. Without this controlling resistance which helped to make 
America emotionally and spiritually more temperate in dealing with the 
great crisis, this sentiment might merely have flared up and died down 
again. It is needless to say that men who will thus risk popular 
disapproval in order to speak their consciences must exert a powerful 
influence even in producing and moulding an effect which apparently 
runs counter to their efforts, for the strongest men are those who can 
exercise the supreme self-control whether for themselves or for the 
nation. 

But although Mr. Bryan deserves to be mentioned as one of the 
leading influences for moderation and restraint in the great crisis, he 
is, unlike the two senators mentioned, apt to ally himself to imprac- * 
tical methods. Mr. Stone and Mr. La Follette are by no means pacifists 
at any price, but Mr. Bryan hopes to solve great problems and 
deal with critical conditions simply by negating them, but mere nega- 
tion has never yet settled anything in this world. While we heartily 
agree with Mr. Bryan that peace and temperance are two of the 
greatest ideals of America and the world, we disagree altogether with 
him as to the methods by which to realize these ideals, as well as to 
the nature of real peace and true temperance. He hopes to maintain 
universal peace by denying the necessity of fighting for it, and he 
hopes to attain the greatest possible temperance by denying the exist- 
ence of a legitimate natural want and by failing to inquire diligently 
as to what constitutes real temperance. He is wrong, absolutely wrong, 
on both propositions: if we would secure peace for ourselves and the 
world we must fight for it whenever it is necessary, and if we would 
promote true temperance we must fight intemperance in the very heart 
of man, and recognize the actual conditions in the lives of men in the 
broadest and deepest sense, and deal with them in the light of reason 
and experience. This is the only way in which the masculine and 
practical mind deals With actual problems and conditions, and it is 
futile to lift ourselves above such problems and conditions, either by 
beautiful generalizations or by impractical legislation. 

Pacifism and prohibition consistently go together, but they* do not 
embody in themselves two great ideals; they are only two wrong 
ways to incarnate those ideals in the lives of men. If we honor the 
men who strive for these ideals, this is all the more reason why we 
should be on our guard and oppose fallacious and false methods. # 

To the statement made in a previous chapter that all drinking 
nations are strong, while the abstaining nations are decadent, we may 
add here that the strong and advancing nations will also show all those 
other forms of intemperance which are due to the robust passions and 
elemental energies, for the absence of all overflow of such energies 
would certainly indicate that they are at a low ebb. The knowledge of 
this truth, as applied to the individual, has long been crystallized in 

S3 



the saying that the man who is so very, very good and Without vices 
great or small is really good for nothing. Self-control itself is derived 
from those finer and nobler passions which check the elemental passions 
and guide them to greater achievements, those finer passions act- 
ing as a rider who controls the horse, the elemental passions without 
which the higher passions could not come into active being. In weak 
individuals and decadent races the elemental passions are too feeble to 
'produce the higher and controlling passions, so that they will often 
occasion the most disgusting manifestations of intemperance as a result 
of the feebleness of the very passions which it is supposed necessary to 
suppress. It is the case of a decrepit jade, which when not drowsing 
from sheer weakness and obtuseness, will perform all kinds of antics 
and which either needs no control or cannot be controlled, but only 
stopped; for control (the vital element in temperance) does not mean 
to stop or to suppress, but to obtain the best and most desirable effects 
from the thing controlled. Specifically applied to intemperance from 
drinking, this means that, as a rule, weaklings will be afflicted with 
this vice, because their power for enjoyment is greatly diminished to 
begin with and because they are drunkards per se, vainly chasing to 
get from without what is apparently denied them from within and 
fluctuating wildly from one kind of intemperance to another. 

Hitherto we have only been trying to suppress that kind of drunk- 
enness which strikes the eye most readily and disagreeably, not caring 
whether by our foolish and superficial reforms other and more dan- 
gerous forms of intemperance may not be roused into being. We have 
only been trying to force the social boil back into the organism without 
taking measures to prevent the poison from working greater havoc in 
the vital organs within; we were satisfied with the thought of getting 
it away and out of sight where it would not offend our physical eye; 
we were thinking really only of ourselves, not of promoting genuine 
social welfare. If we would truly reform social conditions, we must 
begin by working from the bottom up, not by blowing away some of 
the most conspicuous scum on the surface. 

X. 

ARE THE PROHIBITIONISTS THE WORST ENEMIES OF TRUE 

TEMPERANCE? 

If prohibition, absolute, indiscriminate and universal prohibition 
were the best method or at least one of the best methods, by means x 
of which true temperance could be secured as far as humanly possible 
in our country, we should, we repeat, certainly support it earnestly 
and consistently and with all our heart, but as not only common sense 
and reason, the moral law, as well as a mass of statistical evidence 
gathered through many years abundantly demonstrate that absolute 
prohibition is fundamentally inimical to true temperance, and the zeal- 
ous prohibitionist has proved himself one of the most potent influences 
in fostering the more insidious and more dangerous forms of intem- 
perance, we are with equal determination and earnestness opposed to 
this false principle. 

It seems, indeed, that the contempt with which the professional 
prohibitionists, who would force total abstinence upon their neighbors, 
apparently treat the example of the founder of our religion, and the 
unscrupulousness with which they seem to be misusing statistical fig- 
ures are only paralleled by their obvious ignorance of the problem they 
attempt to "solve" and their ignorance of the men whom they would 
thus forcibly restrict and among whom there are a few drunkards and 

34 



very many temperate drinkers. For these reasons it is not really so 
surprising that they have proved themselves in the end the worst 
enemies of that very temperance for the realization of which they are 
apparently working so zealously. Yes, I can point my finger at them 
as a man who is deeply devoted to true temperance and repeat 
without hesitation: "You are the very worst enemies of true tem- 
perance." Not even the disorderly and illicit liquor dealers are so 
inimical to the development and growth of true temperance as the 
professional prohibitionists. For the disorderly dealer is easily dis- 
cerned as what he is, while the professional prohibitionist is disguised 
as the friend and advocate of temperance (disguised even to himself!) 
and for that reason really more dangerous, and it is he who attacks, 
with his impractical and foolish legislation and his disregard and 
perversion of moral values, true temperance at the very roots. 

The Prohibitionist and the Disorderly and Illicit Dealer Work Hand in 

Hand for Intemperance. 

One of the most remarkable phenomena in connection with the 
drink problem and temperance movement is that the professional pro- 
hibitionists and the liquor dealers (more especially the disorderly and 
illicit liquor dealers) co-operate in promoting and encouraging intem- 
perance, not knowingly perhaps, but actually and in effect. This 
seems an astonishing paradox at the first glance, but it is nevertheless 
a fact which it is not difficult to demonstrate. 

1. The prohibitionist is largely responsible for that species of 
criminals which is designated collectively as "bootlegger," and he 
prevents moderate drinkers from obtaining good, pure and light alco- 
holic beverages and forces them to use the strong, raw, ardent spirits 
which are always so much easier to obtain under prohibition than the 
lighter and better beverages, and which create that unhealthy craving 
that is so conducive to intemperance. The disorderly and illicit dealer 
encourages "bootlegging," (if he is not himself in that category) and 
prefers to sell his customers the superlatively strong distilled liquors, 
because it is much easier to handle that kind and because it is more 
profitable to sell it. 

2. The professional prohibitionist exercises an undue influence 
upon politicians, legislators and even judges, often employing for that 
purpose methods which are immoral if not illegal, such as intimidation, 
blacklisting, misrepresentation, etc. The liquor dealers do the same 
thing more or less in retaliation, thus in effect again co-operating with 
the prohibitionists towards the same end, namely, disseminating cor- 
ruption and promoting intemperance. 

3. The professional prohibitionist repudiates the principles of his 
religious creed, not openly, but by indirection and often hypocritically. 
The disorderly and illicit dealer likewise ignores the maxims of re- 
ligion and the principles of morality, only he does it more openly. 

4. The professional prohibitionist preaches prohibition because it 
is his trade, because it is highly profitable to him, so that he often 
becomes a prey to the corruptnig power of money. He makes money 
easily and plentifully because the liquor traffic exists. The liquor 
dealer also often becomes corrupt because his trade is profitable and 
because he thinks he must fight for self-preservation, and he also 
makes his money as a result of that kind of liquor traffic which the 
prohibitionist has helped to create. 

35 



We will submit just a few concrete examples to illustrate how 
the professional prohibitionist and the liquor dealer, especially the illicit 
and disorderly dealer, work hand in hand to the same end. 

When the prohibitory law was re-submitted to the vote of the 
people of Maine a few years ago and the law was re-affirmed only by 
a very small margin of votes, the illicit dealers had co-operated vigor- 
ously with the prohibitionists. The professional prohibitionists were 
evidently afraid in their hearts that the license law might be re- 
established and that they would have less intemperance to preach about, 
while the illicit dealers feared they would lose a great deal of profitable 
business, because people drink less, because they would be compelled to 
furnish a better quality of liquor and because the license they would 
have to pay regularly would exceed the fines they were paying. 

A coalition of prohibitionists and liquor dealers likewise defeated 
an attempt by the legislature of Massachusetts some years ago to experi- 
ment in the so-called company system which has worked so successfully 
for real temperance in Scandivania. You see, both sides were again, 
consciously or subconsciously, afraid that the experiment might promote 
temperance unduly and thus militate against fat salaries, commissions 
and profits. 

Mr. W. S., a minister, writes: 

"In the city in which I live the superintendent and attorney for this so-called tem- 
perance organization spend their time largely in starting action against people who 
are supposed to be disregarding some of these many (prohibitory) laws. Frequently 
they employ men as 'spotters' who are willing to pick up a few dollars at the rate 
of $2.00 for each case they can discover, or at $15.00 per week for catching as many 
as they can. Then the law allows these attorneys and superintendents for each of 
these cases a fee. The lowest fee that I have heard of is $25.00. It is reported on 
apparently good authority that the fees are 'as high as $1)00.00 in some states. \ 
Throughout the year these cases are coming singly or in groups of ten or twenty or 
more. 

"With the leverage of these foolish and iniquitous laws all sorts of cases may be 
started with no further purpose than that of settling them out of court on the pay- 
ment of such fees as may be agreed upon. Thus we have built up a condition in 
which a small army of spies and attorneys and superintendents may fasten themselves 
like leeches upon the public, may domineer over state legislatures and police depart- 
ments, and even, though despised by all intelligent and right thinking citizens, may 
make a better living than they have heretofore been able to make at any ether occu- 
pation. It is the same condition described by Abraham Lincoln as 'the preacher who 
advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of the church and the 
state; the lawyer from his pride and the vanity of hearing himself speak; and the 
hired agent for his salary/ " 

Are not these methods all paralleled by the "bootleggers" and 
disorderly and illicit dealers? Do they not also pick up a few dollars 
wherever they can — in alleys and in secret places? Do they not also 
fasten themselves like leeches especially upon the weaker men and 
boys? And are they not also making a better living at this iniquitous 
occupation than they could possibly make at anything else? Indeed, 
the parallel is deadly. 

Nor must it be supposed that in the matter of wielding undue 
influence upon legislatures and the officers of the law and in the 
obnoxiousness and immorality of the methods employed to that end the 
liquor dealers "have anything on" the professional prohibitionists, the 
only difference being that the prohibitionists use political coercion 
in the name of morality, while the saloons do it without such pretense. 
For instance, according to the explicit and solemn declaration of W. 
H. Anderson, Anti-Saloon League superintendent of New York, every 
member of congress who will not vote for the submission of an amend- 
ment for national prohibition to the state legislatures thereby "becomes 

36 



an avowed exponent and protector of the liquor traffic." Do you per- 
ceive the Macchiavellian hand of intimidation? Any member of congress 
who will not vote with the prohibitionists is thereby branded as "an 
exponent and protector of the liquor traffic/' just as, as we have else- 
where remarked, a man who merely drinks is by certain mechanical 
church members no longer considered a Christian ! 

Many instances could be cited proving that especially in southern 
states prohibitionists make an open practice of intimidating courts, in 
some cases going even so far as to arrogate altogether the functions 
of the court. 

By means of the "ouster act," which prohibitionists were instru- 
mental in foisting upon the state of Tennessee, and which provides that 
any public official can be removed from office on the petition of ten 
citizens, a handful of prohibitionists were able a few years ago to 
remove from office the mayor of Memphis, and a new mayor was ap- 
pointed who was not elected by the people. The people, however, re- 
elected the ousted mayor for a term beginning in 1916, whereupon the 
same handful of men by the aid of the courts again removed the 
man who had been twice elected by the people and the office is now 
administered by a court-appointed mayor! Isn't this the acme of 
democracy and popular government? 

Speaking of popular government with regard to the proposed 
amendment for national prohibition into voting for which prohibitionists 
have been trying to coerce our senators and representatives, do you 
know that should the legislatures of the various states vote on this 
amendment, whose purpose is not regulative in the sense that mail 
and railroad legislation is, but which aims to restrict men in their 
purely personal affairs, the smallest' state shall have the same voting 
power as the largest, t. i., most populous, so that, for instance, the 
vote of one man in Nevada will be equal to the vote of one hundred 
and ten men in New York? Thus three men living in the states of 
Arizona, Idaho and Nevada, respectively, will have three votes, while 
forty-four men in New York Will have only one vote; or three men, 
one living in each of the three states named, Who would vote dry would 
outvote forty-four wet New Yorkers in the ratio of three to one. 

As long as the places in which beer and liquor is dispensed are 
licensed and under strict and easy supervision of the law, there is 
hope that the traffic may be effectively controlled and regulated and 
that the interests of true temperance may be protected and served, 
but when the traffic (and drinking itself) is driven by prohibitionists 
into hidden and secret places, it eludes the law to such an extent as 
not only to defeat its purpose, but scatter the seeds of an intensified 
and far more vicious intemperance. The license is the bogey of both 
the illicit dealer and the prohibitionist, for it threatens and endangers, 
as much as anything else that has been tried, their business and exist- 
ence. 

Self-Righteousness Worse Than Physical Intemperance. 

The professional prohibitionist seems to be utterly unable to 
realize that there is something far more obnoxious to God and man 
than mere physical excess, and that is self-righteousness (spiritual in- 
temperance) and the presumptuous desire to regulate our neighbors' 
lives by some pet formula or law of our own which happens to suit 
ourselves. Christ says: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we 
eat? or, What shall we drink? for your heavenly Father knoweth that 
you have need of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of 

37 



God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." 

But what the prohibitionist appears to say is this: Seek ye first to 
avoid drink, and the kingdom of God will be added unto you; or per- 
haps their fundamental principle is more correctly stated thus: Let 
us first utterly abolish the drink traffic, and the kingdom of God will 
be immediately realized. 

There Is Poison in the Heart of Every Lie. 

One of the worst results Of the misrepresentations into which pro- 
fessional prohibitionists are led by their blind zeal and prejudice is 
their influence upon the mind of the child in its formative stages. 
Nearly all text-books on hygiene and physiology are filled with these 
perversipns and gratuitous assumptions, just sufficiently inter- 
lined with facts to make them the more misleading, concerning the 
use of alcohol. I am quite Willing to grant that their intentions are 
good, but here as elsewhere, when ends are attained by unscrupulous 
means, the final effect upon the character is either insignificant or 
disastrous; here as elsewhere it remains true that there is poison at 
the heart of every lie, especially at the heart of the disguised and 
hidden lie, and this poison is morally far worse than any poison 
that can be taken into the stomach. Why paint distorted pictures 
to the children? Why not take them fully into your confidence? 
The effect of this moral poison can be observed every day in the be- 
havior, for instance, of many criminals who so often, if not invariably, 
put the responsibility for their crimes, not in any way on themselves, 
but wholly on an external circumstance — the opportunity of getting 
whiskey, so that whiskey has become the guise and cloak behind which 
so many defectives hide their Weakness and turpitude and at the same 
time obtain sympathy from the gullible. 

One of the most thorough and practically most competent English 
writers on temperance says: ''The very name 'temperance' has long 
been a by-word among the educated and uneducated alike by being 
usurped to cover a bigoted and self-righteous propaganda from which 
everything temperate was eliminated. * * * True temperance is a 
national cause, but total abstinence and prohibition never has been 
and never will be." 

Our prohibitionists throw all the responsibility for intemperance 
on the outward temptation of a business institution, the "drink traffic," 
and thus minimize the responsibility of the drinkers; but anyone who 
keeps his eyes open and has any knowledge of human nature knows 
that men do not drink because the drinking business exists, but that 
the drinking business exists because men want to drink and, they 
want to drink because it gives them pleasure, because "wine makes 
glad the heart of man." 

All experience shows that in drinking countries deficiency of regu- 
lar opportunities is a still greater force of intemperance than excess 
of such opportunities, because it drives the people to create irregular 
opportunities for themselves. The people in a free country always 
will evade an irksome social law and make their own opportunities, 
which, as a rule, are more harmful than those which the law has taken 
away. 

Man the Master of Drink, Not Drink the Master of Man. 

Until our would-be reformers become really earnest and rid them- 
selves of prejudice and hyprocrisy and realize the devotion of the 
people for beer and milder liquors, they will continue to prepare dis- 
ss 



appointment for themselves and continue to be the worst foes of true 
temperance. In spite of all gratuitous assumptions, man must prove 
that he is the master of drink, not drink the master of man; but 
the mastership of drink is taken for granted when it is thought 
necessary that drink be put physically out of his reach. Who are you 
that would treat your neighbors as minors and as being forever in- 
competent to regulate the affairs of their own bodies? 

Nothing can be more certain than that drunkenness is primarily 
and fundamentally in the drunkard and only secondarily and incidentally 
in the drink, but our would-be reformers are so befogged in their 
prejudices and pet theories that they do not see that to minimize the 
responsibility of the vicious always encourages vice more than anything 
else could encourage it. The drunkard is a very great nuisance, in 
many respects a greater nuisance than the professional criminal; but 
to say that he is not responsible for his condition or his misconduct 
is to declare that he is, and always has been, morally dead, while at 
the same time encouraging and justifying his conduct. The elimina- 
tion of individual responsibility for vices and delinquencies, such as 
drunkenness naturally also implies the elimination of moral desert, so 
that, ultimately, man's character would be merely a result of mechanical 
laws and he would cease to be a moral agent. 

Concerning State Wide Prohibition. 

As to the external effects and conditions brought about by state 
wide prohibition, it is not the purpose of this little book to present 
long arrays of statistical figures. Besides, it has been done so often, 
and the information thus obtained is at best superficial. The reader 
is referred to the U. S. States Bureau of Statistics at Washington 
where he can obtain the best statistical information that is available, 
\. and to simplify matters he should ask for the statistics for the two 
states that have had prohibition longer than all others, namely, Kansas 
and Maine, and if he will analyze these statistics, especially those show- 
ing final results, and compare them with corresponding conditions in 
the adjacent states that have not had prohibition, he will find that 
prohibition has proved itself worse than a failure. We may only add 
that scarcely in any other controversy than that regarding the effi- 
cacy of prohibition have figures been juggled to such utter confusion. 
0. K. Swaze, county clerk at Topeka, Kas., summarizes the situation 
in a letter to the writer with these wrathful words: "Both of them 
(the prohibition people and the liquor men) are monumental liars, and 
cannot be trusted to get a truthful story, apparently." 

Since, as we have said in Chapter IX, all forms of intemperance 
are runners from one common root, it follows with the inevitableness of a 
natural law that when an attempt is made to suppress one form of 
intemperance by wholly repressing the natural desire of which such 
intemperance is an excessive indulgence or excrescence, the repressed 
desire will spring out in other and frequently more dangerous forms 
of intemperance. Hence we find that in the states Which have had 
prohibition for many years the attempt to repress the desire to drink 
altogether has stimulated reactively, the following principal forms ^ of 
intemperance: (1) the most obvious reaction in the form of intensifi- 
cation, a la bootlegger, patent medicine, illicit manufacture, etc., of 
that form of intemperance which it was the purpose to suppress; 
(2) the widely disseminated moral reaction in the form of hyprocrisy 
with all its by-products and effects on the general character; (3) that 
form of intemperance which we have called the most obnoxious and 



hateful of all, namely, the intemperance of the spirit. The man who, 
abstaining-, thinks he is therefore better and cleaner than his neighbor 
who may drink moderately is not cleaner or better, but merely in a 
state of spiritual decay. It is said that cleanliness is next to godliness, 
and so it surely is, provided that godliness is behind the cleanliness; 
but cleanliness without godliness is the furthest of all things from 
godliness. It is the cleanliness of the immaculate pharisee, the cleanli- 
ness of the whited sepulcher, the cleanliness of death. It is this 
spiritual intemperance which our Lord attacked vehemently on all oc- 
casions, while he treated the purely physical forms of intemperance 
as comparatively insignificant. Yet this worst and most subtle reaction 
to the repressive effect of prohibition naturally escapes the scrutiny 
of the statistician entirely, while the more obvious reaction which we 
recognize everywhere in public and private life and which we feel in 
the very atmosphere, that moral disease called hypocrisy, is likewise too 
intangible to be appraised as a definite quantity, so that the statistician 
can only tell us of the least obnoxious reaction to the repressive power 
of prohibition, namely, intensified intemperance from drinking and all 
that results therefrom, but even this least obnoxious effect will be 
found bad enough. 

Is It the Goal of Prohibitionism to Transform the Whole World Into 

a Gigantic Penitentiary? 

Our professional prohibitionists must be regarded as a sect who 
while still very loudly maintaining that they are followers of Christ, 
have really detached themselves from him to serve their pet passion 
to muzzle the mouths of men against drinking what they choose to 
drink. They are, therefore, at heart, also the enemies of popular 
government, and undoubtedly after succeeding to muzzle people against 
drinking, smoking, etc., they will proceed to muzzle them against 
expressing themselves freely by suppressing the liberty of speech and 
the freedom of the press. A letter Written by one of these would-be 
reformers to the New York Evening Press is illuminatively relevant: 

"Speaking now in my personal capacity, and not as a member of the Anti-Saloon 
League, I will say that I regard the anti-liquor crusade as merely the beginning of a 
much larger movement — a movement that will have as its watchword "Efficiency of 
Government." If I had my way I would not only close up the saloons and the race 
tracks. I would close all tobacco shops, confectionery stores, delicatessen shops and 
other places where gastronomical deviltries are purveyed — all low theaters and bathing 
beaches. [ would forbid the sale of gambling devices, such as playing cards, dice, 
checkers and chess sets; I would forbid the holding of socialistic, anarchistic and athe- 
istic meetings; I would abolish dancing; I would abolish the sale of ccffee and tea, and 
I would forbid the making and sale of pastry, pie, cake and such like trash." 

That will be the millenium toward which the prohibitionists are 
gravitating, when the world will be one huge penitentiary in which 
the prohibitionists will be the jailers and guards! 

How Prohibitionists Might Mohammedanize Christianity Still Further. 

The prohibitionists might go still further in the process of muzzling 
men, and introducing other Mohammedan laws and doctrines into our 
Christian community, they might quite consistently advocate that the 
faces of all women be carefully hidden from all men but their husbands 
in order to remove another universal temptation from men, since cer- 
tainly all female seductiveness is concentered in the face; a tempta- 
tion which is even much more powerful for the majority of men than 
liquor, and by which the weak man is led into much greater danger. 

40 



For beyond all controversy woman is man's greatest temptation (and 
perhaps for that very reason also the solution of life's riddle to him). 

The manner in which the professional prohibitionists frown upon 
such entertainments as dancing and ballets (which they collectively 
designate the "low theater") points precisely in that direction, for these 
entertainments are condemned chiefly because they provide what they 
term a too free contact between men and women, either through 
physical proximity or through visual contact. As if the touch of the 
average woman could be defiling to a man! The mere insinuation 
that such is the case is an insult of the Worst kind. Their deep ven- 
eration of Mohammed might consistently lead them still further, and 
joining hands with the Mormons, they might want to put other 
protective barriers around the poor, weak American man in the form 
of polygamy. If one wife cannot keep a man straight, perhaps several 
wives might be equal to the task? Many prohibitionists will be horri- 
fied at such an ultimation of their reform work, yet nothing is more 
logical, for the worst enemies of true temperance will in the end, if 
they persist successfully in their present course, become the worst ene- 
mies of true morality. 

I do not mean to be understood that there are not quite a large 
number of honest and smcere men among the prohibitionists, men who 
devote themselves earnestly and even unselfishly to the reform which 
they hope to achieve by prohibition, but these men lack psychological 
insight and human historical knowledge. They are therefore entirely 
incompetent to accomplish the tasks they have set themselves, for if 
they were competent they would not be total prohibitionists and allow 
themselves to be working under the blight of an artificially stimulated 
movement. We all know that ignorance and incompetence will often 
work more harm, either in public or private life, than even gross 
dishonesty, for the dishonest but intelligent man will frequently work 
for the good, since many cases arise in which his own good is identical 
with that of others or in which it pays much better to be honest than 
otherwise, but the incompetent though honest man, if left to himself, 
will nearly always work disaster. So much for the sincere and honest 
prohibitionist : he must first educate and reform himself to be a true 
, reformer. 

XL 

GOD IN THE WAR. 

God Thought It Necessary to Tempt Man in Order to Make Him to His 

Stature. 

The profound truth that all moral worth can only arise from a 
reasonable freedom of choice finds one of the strongest expressions 
and most illuminating exemplifications in the story of the "Fall of man." 
If it had been God's desire that above all things man should not dis- 
obey Him and fall, He would not deliberately have put the object of 
temptation in his way, for it would have been easy for Him, surely, to 
keep the forbidden tree out of man's reach. He knew absolutely the 
mind and character of the man and the woman He created, and being 
omniscient, He not only knew that they would be tempted, but that they 
would break His command, not to eat of the forbidden fruit. God 
thus could have prevented man's so-called Fall, either by not putting 
the object of his temptation within such easy reach, or by giving him 
such a will as would infallibly have obeyed God's law ; but God did not 
want to prevent it because He knew that only by being tempted and 

41 



"falling" could the final touch be put upon his masterwork, the touch 
which lifted man out of a beatific animalism into the dignity of a moral 
and self-conscious being. It was not only necessary, therefore, that 
man should be tempted, according to a logical interpretation of this 
story, but even that he should learn that he could act contrary to the 
command of God, for only in that way could he learn self-control, only 
in that Way could be revealed to him that he had a free will. Our 
prohibitionists, if they had been on hand, would undoubtedly have 
counselled God to pass a law for the removal of the forbidden tree, for 
of course they would know the business of making man's soul better 
than the Almighty, even as they deem themselves so much wiser than 
Christ, His only begotten Son. 

The story of the Fall of Man does not teach that we should in any 
way favor artificial temptations for the purpose of building up char- 
acter— for that would indeed be worse than folly— but that such natural 
objects of temptation which, when properly and reasonably controlled, 
serve a good and innocent end or are part of a proper scheme of life, a 
scheme in which the natural desires are not ignored or overridden, are 
the rocks upon which alone true character is built, although the too 
weak vessel may be shattered upon them. The spirit of prohibition is 
that of mediaeval aloofness, which demands the removal of all natural 
temptation and which when carried out to its logical conclusion leads to 
the withering of the heart and decay of practical manhood. It is a 
creed which is based upon self-deceit, self-righteousness and spiritual 
pride, and therefore infested with a canker at the very roots. 

Has God Forsaken the World? 

The initial step of the magic and wonderful transformation and 
evolution of man's soul as revealed in the story of the Fall of the first 
parents has been repeated since the advent of man countless numbers of 
times and is being repeated to this day to enable man to find freedom, 
truth, salvation, God. Also in the terrible war which is now Waging in 
Europe and in which apparently the greatest ingenuity of the mind of 
man and the most effective machineries of destruction are employed on 
a vast scale to destroy as many human lives as possible, thousands of 
them, millions of them, so that hell is realized on earth with a fright- 
fulness that transcends the imagination of a Dante and puts to shame 
the pen of a Milton. The soul of man is filled with despair in contem- 
plating this sublimely awful spectacle, and he asks himself in the spirit 
of Job: Where is God? Has He entirely forsaken this world? Has 
He withdrawn Himself altogether from the affairs of man? For surely 
He cannot have a part in this hellish slaughter. And why does He not 
stop it? Is He absolutely indifferent to the world? 

God Has Unlimited Faith in Man. 

No, God has not forsaken man! He is not indifferent to the fate of 
the world. He merely repeats and re-enacts on a grand scale what He 
first did in Eden in allowing the first parents to be tempted and fall. 
He has confidence in His children that in spite of the terrible mis- 
understanding now raging between them, they will in the end find 
each other, find the truth and Him, and that out of the hatred which 
now sheds oceans of blood the most glorious triumph and the fullest 
and vastest understanding will spring the world has ever seen. So He 
lets them fall again and again in order that they may rise to a stronger 
brotherhood and see the greater light from the depths of their despair. 

The German is fighting not only for himself, but also for his 

42 



enemies, and the Allies are fighting for the Germans as well as for 
themselves. The Germans have already taught their enemies efficiency, 
orderliness, greater respect for governmental authority and the necessity 
of an apparently autocratic centralization of power; the Allies, perhaps 
led by our own country, are going to teach the Germans the need and 
the grandeur of that popular government which grows out of liberty — 
for the people, of the people and by the people. And the fiercest 
enemies shall yet become the strongest friends, and through all the 
blood that is inundating the countries of Europe shall triumphantly rise 
that greater love which loves even its enemies. 

The End of Autocracy and Plutocracy? 

The political autocracy of kaisers and kings and the autocracy of 
money, although they had no intention of doing so at first, are going 
to fight it out to a finish, each hoping to subjugate or destroy the other. 
Ye't both will go down and both will be forced to release their hold upon 
the people or meet at least their worst defeat in history. Political 
autocracy looms up as the worst enemy of the people, but after all it 
stands out in the open where it can be seen and attacked if only suffi- 
cient power can be mustered, but the instinctively and invisibly organ- 
ized autocracy of money is more elusive and the infinite ramifications 
of its masterful system rest not only heavy on the shoulders of all men, 
but penetrate even into the hearts of nearly all of us, rendering us all 
more or less willing or unwilling slaves. If this bloodiest of all wars 
lasts long enough, the autocracy of kaisers and kings is doomed, but if 
it lasts still longer, the mightier autocracy of money Will receive a blow 
so staggering that perhaps it will never quite recover its former point 
of vantage. The people thus freed from the two greatest tyrannies will 
come into their own, and one great purpose of this war shall have been 
fulfilled. 

Thus men are going to prove themselves God's children. Yes, in 
spite of all the fearful array of appearances to the contrary, God has 
faith in His children. He lets them know His law, but He absolutely 
refuses to take away from them the power and temptation to break it. 
They must learn to be good, forbearing and temperate from choice, 
through the alchemy of their own hearts. Men are often satisfied with 
"actors," but God wants them to live what they are, perhaps He even 
prefers those who live wrongly to those who act according to some law 
which they are afraid to break or which they find it merely gainful to 
respect. 

How indeed could men and nations learn self-restraint, the vital 
element in temperance, if they had no opportunity to exercise such 
self-restraint, but were always restrained by some power outside of 
them, whether human or divine? How could they learn justice, if 
they were always forced to merely act justly? How could they learn 
liberty, if they had not some choice, in seeking that liberty, to commit 
even wrong and sin? 

No, God has not forsaken the world and God is not a prohibitionist! 
Even in the face of the most indescribable savagery He still has faith 
in man and allows him freedom of action, while the prohibitionists will 
not even admit that he is fit to be entrusted with the care of his own 
physical person in such comparatively insignificant matters as the 
regulation of his appetite in drinking. God says with the most terrible 
insistence that man's will is free, free, but the prohibitionists and those 
who have not faith in man say that he is no better than a slave or 
minor and must be forever fettered or "protected." Hypocrisy is one 
of the most dangerous poisons that can infect our national character, 

43 



and if the great war shall deliver us of this vice, a great deal shall 
have been gained for our national health through this deliverance alone. 

Our own country shall be reborn to a greater national life and uni- 
fication by those bonds which are rooted in the hearts of men and 
sealed by their blood. The Civil War was the great self-conquest of 
our nation and its internal unification by which we proved our indi- 
visible and unbreakable nationhood, but the present war will give birth 
to that greater America which, while first of all maintaining its own 
integrity, does not even as a nation live for itself alone, but is a mem- 
ber of the great family of the world's peoples, and participates in the 
hopes and struggles of all. No sacrifice is too great to bring about the 
birth of this greater America which at last realizes its full destiny. 
No wonder that the world rocks and trembles in the throes of this 
mighty deliverance. 

If the recognition of the freedom of the will or moral autonomy is 
only possible by the actual exercise of that will in the face of natural 
temptation with which the human will must be confronted, as first 
revealed and exemplified through the temptation of the first parents 
in Eden, the human-divine consummation of this self-realization of the 
unity of. man with God was accomplished on the Cross, As the story of 
the Fall, like the prayer "and lead us not into temptation" (which takes 
for granted that God will lead us into temptation) shows with unsur- 
passable directness that God does not care for the goodness of mere 
seeming or acting, that he is not a prohibitionist, so the crucifixion 
proves beyond all possible controversy that God is not a pacifist. For 
in the person of His well beloved only begotten Son He makes war upon 
all corruption and sin, and especially upon hypocrisy and merely out- 
ward goodness, even to the point of laying down His life on the cross 
and forcing others to kill Him. 

The War a Vastly Extensified Crucifixion. 

Like the Fall of Man so the Final Rise of Man on the cross has 
been repeated every day and every hour, and the crucifixion has been 
re-enacted in countless millions of hearts, for it was in the heart of Man 
that the crucifixion took place and takes place, not on any place called 
Golgatha. As the Fall in Eden taught man that his will was free, so 
the story of the Cross reveals that the finest and sweetest fruit of that 
freedom of the individual will is to freely surrender that will for the 
higher will, to submerge the individual life in the higher life of the 
Nation, Humanity and God. As the Story of the Fall can be read in 
a vastly enlarged frame in the great world war, so the divinely intensive 
sacrifice of the Cross can be seen projected in this titanic world-tearing 
conflict extensified on a scale vaster than ever before in the history of 
this world. Nations are crucifying themselves apparently for the 
purpose of destroying each other, but in reality to find the greater 
brotherhood. Although the great world war is a Fall of immeasurable 
depth in that one nation will attack another nation seeking to destroy 
it, it is also a crucifixion of immeasurable height and grandeur in that 
the members of each nation immolate themselves for their country, for 
their ideals, for humanity. 

How great and how far-reaching will that love be which will rise 
from the ashes of the world fire! If humanity survives from the 
awful, almost superhuman test, it shall have proved itself once more 
divine, as the Prince of Peace proved Himself human on the Cross. It 
will be a love so much vaster, a peace so much deeper, a humanity so 
much sweeter that we shall say that it was well worth the immeasurable 
sacrifice. Then, when all the wounds are healed, even France and 

44 



Germany, the two traditional world-historic enemies, the central figures 
in the focus of the great conflict and the most splendid fighters of all, 
may yet embrace like bride and bridegroom and become the chief 
guardians of world peace. Do not say this is a poetic dream: the 
greatest things are the dearest and they demand the greatest sacrifices, 
and it is a precious privilege to lay down one's life for so great a cause. 

Though Men Are Brave and Noble, Women Are Braver and Nobler Still. 

^But great and noble as is the sacrifice of the men who give their 
lives on the battlefield, it seems that after all they do only the mechan- 
ical fighting on the outside, and that the bravest and noblest fighting 
is done by the women at home who eat their own hearts' blood and die 
over and over again without making any claim to renown and glory. 
Men give merely their own lives, but women give the lives of those 
they love as well as their own and yet live in the deep shadow of this 
double death. The men, their great task done, may rest peacefully 
beneath the blood-drenched battlefield, but the women must live on with 
hearts entombed. They all wear the crown of thorns and they are all 
crucified these noble women of France, Germany, England and the other 
countries at war. 

Yes, men are brave, but compared with the bravery of the women, 
the most manly valor seems but as poor and idle swagger, and it is 
the bravest men who know best how true this is. Nor let us forget 
that in all things, especially the things of the spirit and soul which 
alone count in the end, women are also more temperate than men, 
although the men will corrupt them and exclaim: "C'est la femme!" 
It is the Woman, she gave me of the tree ! 

The Lesson of the Great War. 

If the great world war will teach one lesson of surpassing signifi- 
cance and importance, it will be the lesson of self-control and tem- 
perance: temperance in the desire for riches, in teaching that abnormal 
wealth belongs in a much lesser degree to the individual, no matter how 
obtained, than moderate and limited possessions; temperance in ruling 
and dominating, in proving that unbridled love of power becomes its 
own undoing even with the most formidable economic and military 
machine the world has ever seen; temperance in the vain exaltation of 
the spirit, in demonstrating that no nation belongs wholly to itself, 
that humanity is greater than the greatest nation, that man is greater 
than a mere German, Frenchman, Englishman or American; temper- 
ance of emotion, in showing that in the solution of great problems and 
issues individual feelings must be discounted for the greater good ; yea, 
even temperance in eating and drinking, insomuch as the scarcity ^ of 
supplies has put a check upon gluttony and excessive drinking the like 
of which the world has not experienced for generations, so that not 
only the spirit but also the body of man is receiving a purgation and 
purification as perhaps never before in the memory of the living. 

If the great war, besides yielding the exquisite fruit of a deeper 
understanding and a sweeter brotherhood between the nations of the 
world, shall teach the world this great lesson of self-control and tem- 
perance, shall it not have been worth all it cost? 

XII. 

CONSTRUCTIVE REFORM OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION. 

From all that has been said in these pages, would it not be infinitely 
wiser for our prohibitionists if instead of seeking to remedy the 

45 



drink evil by that purely repressive legislation which is proying the 
mightiest ally of intemperance and maintaining for that purpose at 
great expense a powerful lobby at Washington (men who are paid 
big salaries for the purpose of influencing members of congress for 
their cause) they would study the actual conditions and the nature 
of the "problem" they mean to solve and the real effect, in every 
respect, of such legislation as has been tried in this and other 
countries in order to determine what laws actually promote temperance. 
There can be no more doubt that reasonable laws, tested by experience, 
have proved and Will continue to prove successful and helpful in re- 
ducing intemperance and promoting true temperance as that unreason- 
able, purely theoretical legislation has proved a failure and will con- 
tinue to prove a failure. The true criterion of the reformer's sin- 
cerity and intelligence is his willingness to subject his theory or prin- 
ciple to the test of scientifically analyzed experience and be guided by 
that decision. But our prohibitionists have refused to study the drink 
problem honestly and impartially even at long distance; they have 
refused to come down from their self-righteous a priori position, and 
they have persistently denounced all those as henchmen of the liquor 
interests who tried to be fair and who sought temperance for its own 
sake rather than the vindication of a disproved method which attempts 
to solve the problem by trying to abolish it. That seems easy to 
them, for it requires neither study nor knowledge, only talking and 
legislating ad infinitum. 

According to the prohibitionists, for instance, all alcoholic bev- 
erages are equally harmful: raw 100 proof spirit or even plain alcohol 
is classed by them with beer, which only contains 31/2 per cent, and 
wine which contains 10 to 12 per cent, and to them everything contain- 
ing alcohol is just "booze," although there is, physiologically speaking, 
a tremendous difference between these beverages and the wine and 
beer drinking nations have always been remarkably temperate. This 
fact is recognized to such an extent in countries like Denmark that 
the tax from all beer of 2.25 per cent alcohol has been removed entirely, 
with the result that general sobriety has taken a phenomenal leap 
upward, although the consumption of beer has enormously increased 
in that country. Until recently Denmark was one of the drunkenest 
countries, although the total amount of alcohol, measured in gallons 
of pure alcohol, consumed per capita was scarcely half that of Italy, 
yet, in striking contrast to Denmark, Italy has always been one of the 
most temperate countries on the globe, the reason being that Italians 
always drank wine, while the Danes drank ardent spirits. In Denmark, 
you see, they legislate in the interest of true temperance and not to 
vindicate a theory which does not work in practice. Our own federal 
government commits an error in taxing all beverages containing more 
than % P er cen t alcohol, because such taxation obviously has no 
regard of the possible effect on the drink evil. 

Again, if our prohibitionists wanted to show their zeal for tem- 
perance sincerely and scientifically, they would long have seen the 
imperfection and inadequacy of our license system in helping to promote 
temperance. But they are, of course, not really interested in licensing 
the drink traffic or in finding out whether it can be so modified so as 
to become an effective agent for temperance ; they only want to suppress 
the drink traffic, and where they cannot do that, they want as high 
license as possible. Now the great defect of the license system is that 
a uniform fee is exacted regardless of 'the amount of liquor sold, so 
that every dealer has a special incentive to sell as much as possible or 
at least enough, by hook or crook, to pay for the license and make a 

46 



profit. But between an inadequate license system and prohibition, 
both of which breed intemperance, there is a third way "which is based 
upon scientific observation. All licensing and taxing should be imposed 
with a view of lessening the drink evil, and to this consideration the 
desire for revenue should always yield. 

The brewers, of course, are greatly to blame in exploiting this 
imperfect license system by advancing the license fee to many dealers 
and then forcing them to produce the money out of the trade some- 
how, whereby the business receives a special and undue incentive as a 
matter of self-preservation which has no regard whatever of temper- 
ance. The liquor dealers and saloon keepers themselves hardly ever 
give the matter of lessening the drink evil a thought, they only think 
of their profits as do the men in other businesses. The brewers and 
dealers are beginning to see the error of their ways, but the license 
system must be reformed before much improvement can be expected. 

One of the most successful experiments in scientific liquor legis- 
lation for the purpose of promoting temperance in drinking is the 
so-called Gothenburg or company system. This system is now in force 
all over Sweden and the greater part of Norway, and even in Aberdeen, 
England, it has been given a very successful trial by Lord Grey. In 
this system all the profits from the business, beyond the interest on 
the investment, which goes to the shareholders of the company, are 
devoted to charitable and public uses, so that no one is interested 
unduly in increasing the sale of liquor. As a result of this system 
the liquor business has been absolutely divorced from politics and 
the sale of ardent spirits has been greatly reduced, and Sweden and 
Norway, formerly two of the drunkenest countries in the world, are 
progressing fast on the road to greater temperance. In this system, 
too, the traffic is absolutely controlled by law and the number of 
public houses reduced to the lowest safe limits. The company system 
also demonstrates among other things that drink-selling can be made 
respectable and surrounded by a wholesome atmosphere even in those 
countries which have been cursed by drunkenness. 

As mentioned in a previous chapter, an attempt was made some 
few years ago by the legislature of Massachusetts to experiment with 
the company system, but the liquor dealers and the prohibitionists, 
fought like brothers to render the attempt abortive. 

Of the many futile and unscientific experiments in liquor legislation 
that have been made in our country there is at least one which has 
yielded good fruit, namely, the principle of Local Option. It is one of 
the very few successful principles of that kind that have been originated 
in our country, and the readiness with which other countries have 
adopted this principle contrasts very strongly with our ineptitude to 
learn from them who far surpass us in constructive and scientific liquor 
legislation. This principle has even been improved by the foreigners 
insomuch as they do not allow the country districts to dominate^ the 
cities in which the sentiments and the needs of the people are widely 
different from the country, a domination which is at least a mis- 
application of the principle, if not, in some cases, a suicidal violation 
thereof, as it creates, in a modified way, an obnoxious condition similar 
to that which would ensue in a vote on national prohibition, when one 
man in Nevada practically outvotes more than a hundred New Yorkers. 

Of course, the American saloon in its present form must go; but 
let us not forget that the saloon, as it now is, is largely what the 
prohibitionists have helped to make it. It is a long and interesting 
story; but if the prohibitionists had only worked half as zealously to 
improve it as they have worked to just annihilate it and suppress all 

47 



drinking- — regardless of consequences, it would be an entirely different 
story, and the tavern of Colonial days would never have degenerated 
into our present day saloon. 

A Federal Board to Solve the Liquor Problem. 

In the light of the splendid success which has been achieved by 
scientific and constructive liquor legislation in other countries, there 
is absolutely no excuse why in our own country this important reform 
should be left to a small body of inexpert, unscientific, self-elected 
propagandists who live not only for but by the advocacy of prohibition 
and whose business it is to manufacture that very public sentiment 
which makes such advocacy so profitable to them and who cannot help 
being corrupted by the immense sums of money over which they have 
control. 

If any real and fundamental reform of the liquor situation is to 
be hoped for, the Federal Government must begin it. To that end 
congress should create a Federal Commission or Board for the sole 
purpose to investigate the drink problem. This board should be em- 
powered and instructed: 

1. To revise the tax and license system with a view, primarily, 
of lessening the drink evil, and only secondarily with the object of 
producing revenue. Under the present system of taxing and licensing 
the selling of those beverages is encouraged which are least conducive 
to temperance. ' 

2. The causes of intemperance, whether economical, physiological 
or due to improper legislation, should be thoroughly investigated by the 
most competent experts and scientists that can be procured. 

3. The results of the most important liquor enactments in our 
country, including absolute prohibition, should be carefully studied and 
ascertained to determine to what extent they fulfilled or failed to 
fulfill their purpose to promote temperance, real temperance, not ap- 
parent temperance or mere police record temperance. 

4. The results of constructive liquor legislation in other countries 
should be given due consideration to determine as to what extent 

those laws might be profitably employed in our country. 

• 

5. The board should act in an advisory, and where necessary, in 
a mandatory, capacity to suggest to the states legal enactments which 
will divorce the traffic from politics and the producer from the retailer 
and in every way tend to lessen the drink evil. All patched-up and 
make-shift legislation should be abolished. 

The creation of such a board would be the initial step towards 
real liquor reform, the kind of reform that would, first and last, aim 
to increase temperance. It is needless to say that the two great 
enemies of temperance, the liquor dealers and the professional pro- 
hibitionists, will be up in arms to oppose such radical and genuine 
reform — reform that will go down to the root of the evil, since both of 
these factions, as such, will be put out of business unless they also 
reform themselves in time. We note, however, that in Norway, where 
beer of 2.25 per cent alcohol is exempt from any impost, even the 
prohibitionists have conceded the wisdom of this measure. Norwegiar 
prohibitionists must be a great deal more sensible and intelligent than 
their American confreres. 

48 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS • 



029 827 240 4 



